I have always said that I have a subtle and nuanced relationship with the old boy.

Both the B.O.T.A. and the Golden Dawn consider him to be needing a pitch fork as he walks around and does BEASTly things that are now pretty tame because we’re all doing them. Arguments have been put forward on both and boil down to this: Was he great or was he terrible? At times, either and both. My gut has always told me to hold onto what I have lived about him.

He studied the classics at Cambridge. That is really the biggest thing. It is an entire culture that shapes a person into what the demons call a CROWN, a top power. That is a person with the finest education in the world. Having such an education and such a set of associations meant that he had intellectual capacities that the rest of us — and I include myself — in particularly the American lower middle class lack.

By “read the classics” I mean verbs and dictionaries. You have to memorize those verbs and pore through those dictionaries with an ancient text in front of you and then it changes you in ways that are fundamental.

I memorized a few of those verbs at Brigham Young and I see Crowley. He is an English gentleman who was given a moment.

He did wonderful things with that moment, and the overt religion of Thelema is not the best of them, but it is a nice place to hang out with a glass of wine. It binds the effluvia of the Cambridge classics set and that is something we western art magicians, whoever we are, need, and I ENDURE TO THE END IN YOUR WORLDS.

It is a fine thing for people to have making, and I have had Mormonism and the Golden Dawn, and they were beautiful and built me into what I am, so yes, go ahead and have Thelema straight-up and a lodge, but I can’t make myself do the same thing any more.

I read The Book of the Law. The Book of the Law tells you to read it once, destroy it, and go out and live passionately or a terrible curse will fall upon you.

I was lying in the tub with candles when I read this book. I got up out of the tub and tore it up.

And it was Rose’s book anyway.

I have noticed those who keep the Book and refer to it again and again it and quote it do have a terrible curse fall upon them. They are worked from the underworld by a Great Tradition.

I have been worked from the underworld by the world of engineering in the work of war. I did this mostly by being myself and a helpless housewife. I know this, and for this reason I am commanded to do math so that these powers can do better work. The Cabala doesn’t like to be put in moth balls.

I have always held it against Crowley how he did his poetry and his mountain climbing.

Crowley would get high, stay up all night and write a poem, and self-publish it in the morning. I hate him. He was furious when Yeats won the Nobel Prize. Dude. You have to work at something every day for a very long time.

Exactly, I hear him say.

His hastily organized expedition up Kanchenchunga killed several people. He insisted that he could see the mountain with astral vision. Gentlemen with small minds urged him to Take His Time, astral vision or not.

Then there’s Thelema. All those people chanting DO AS THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW in unison. What they need is verbs.

The Enochian empire magic of the O.T.O. has nearly killed me without knowing what it was about. You can’t shut down the demon paths because they are too dangerous. You have to have the sine qua non and it has to be dangerous. The African Tradition can kill. Without our big guns, we are sitting ducks. That is why I got into the demon work. Someone I know got killed HIV.

I love Thelemites. They are inventive and interesting. My own tradition of the Golden Dawn is so regimented that the demons do not allow me to reenter it with them so finely struck.

If we do not do the ritual work and study that we need in order to bind ourselves into a mini Cambridge classics club, and rely mainly on the drugs and the sex magick to build our astral worlds, the magick consumes the power necessary to have the old ones. That is why I didn’t come around the lodge in person until after I had the demon work in and really running.

I do not blame the very nice people in our community and I do enjoy that world. But we are sold a bill of goods when we are not complained about.

As a general rule, we are not supposed to have greatness in large organizations but we do have to make power.

Stupid power.

Power that the wealthy and the entire structure of government sorcery can RIDE in their work and do ridiculous things we don’t even know about — except we do. 

Crowley knew what he was doing making sure he had a lot of stupid power, though I doubt it has even his respect.