Aleister Crowley & The Natural World

Aleister Crowley (Edward Alexander Crowley) was born 12 October in the same year as the foundation of the Theosophical Society (1875), at Leamington Spa at 11.30pm. He was therefore a Libran with Pisces moon and Leo rising. Contrary to popular legend, he died on the 1st December 1947. A review in Cambridge University magazine Granta of 1904 provides some guidance on the pronunciation of the great man’s name: ‘Oh, Crowley, name for future fame!/(Do you pronounce it Croully?)/Whate’er the worth of this your mirth/It reads a trifle foully.’ The myth of the magus has grown to prodigious proportions in the half century or more since the old man’s death. Crowley is now firmly established in the popular mind as a folk hero (or anti hero?), transmogrified to an icon on a spectrum somewhere between 'the sandman' (Clive Barker version) and 'the gringe'. To many, Crowley’s magick (I’m using the archaic form of the term as popularised by AC for technical reasons), provides a neat dividing line between some kind of urban high magical tradition and the supposedly more earth centred styles of neo-paganism. The truth is, as always, a lot more complex. Crowley’s magick draws all of it’s power from nature, see for example an ancient Egyptian formula: ‘so that every Spirit of the Firmament and of the Ether: Upon the Earth and under the Earth; on dry land and in the Water: of whirling Air; and of rushing Fire and every spell and scourge of God may be obedient to Me.’ (1) Crowley spent all of his moderately long life exploring countless dramatic astral and mundane landscapes in search of gnosis. It’s a shame he wasn’t a good enough travel writer to communicate fully in his many books the real majesty of nature. He seemed to go everywhere, from the deepest jungles to the highest mountains of the earth. An account from Jan Fries’ book Visual Magick, amply demonstrates that Crowley never quite lost the taste for the great outdoors and the spirits of nature. In 1925 the mage took the leadership of the ‘Fraternitas Saturni on a long walk up the garden path and into the forest. Whenever Uncle Aleister noticed a remarkable plant, stone or tree, he graciously lifted his hat to greet it. This bizarre behaviour apparently astonished his fellows. Some novices, we are told, dared to whisper “What is the master doing?” “The elemental spirits of nature have come to see the master” was the reply “and Sir Aleister is acknowledging their greeting.” The whole incident including a rather nice ritual is to be found in an article on ‘Pentagramme Magick’ in Praxis (1963). Towards the end of his life Crowley began to lose interest in the Ordo Templi Orientis and other organisations he had fashioned as potential vehicles for the dissemination of the great work. He met Gerald Gardner and together they may have devised a plan to transform the OTO into a more popular witchcraft cult. Gardner duly bought a charter and rose rapidly through the grades, even travelling to America to meet other OTO initiates. Fred Lamond, one of Gardners first acolytes, recalls that American adept Jack Parsons looked very favourably on the idea of a new witch cult. If Crowley had lived long enough to complete Gardner’s training, modern paganism would undoubtedly look quite different, but that’s another story. Mogg Morgan (1) From Liber Samekh, as adapted by Crowley from an ancient Hermetic fragment. The cosmology of the Egyptian original made no sense to Crowley’s teachers, hence his slight paraphrase - the original reads: ‘so that every daimon, whether heavenly or aerial or earthly or subterranean or terrestrial or aquatic’