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Biography - Crowley and Familiars?

ditesco_mori - Jul 07, 2008 - 06:42 AM
Post subject: Crowley and Familiars?

Listen, cats, I don't know if this is a legit question, but I was stewing on it for some reason and had to ask:

Did Mr. Crowley ever mention familiars? using them? whether or not the idea was absurd? too Pagan? too Medieval? or not of them at all?

But then again, I suppose we could establish a working definition for 'familiars' as well, but I trust you. Anywho, I know that he and his fellows in the G.: D.: and I'm sure in the O.: T.: O.: had a kinda Hellenistic or Scientific approach to their subjects, but I would take the idea of a 'familiar' as something not even remotely scientific but shamanistic or 'primitive' or something like that - so has it ever come up?

Just wondering. Really not important. And for the lovapete don't take me to be this 14 year old Wiccan goth kid.

Jacob.

p.s. To tell you how new at this I am, I think the 93 over 93 equation just clicked for me. I get it, and I feel silly for not catching it earlier.

adonia444 - Jul 07, 2008 - 07:04 AM
Post subject: RE: Crowley and Familiars?

This might be of some help..perhaps.

http://www.lashtal.com/nuke/index.php?n ... highlight=

All the best,
Kym

Poelzig - Jul 09, 2008 - 08:43 AM
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Crowley had an extremely shitty record of mistreatment of animals. Really that is the strongest negative aspect of his whole personality that occasionally inclines me to throw his legacy into the trash incinerator. There is no mention that I am aware of in Crowley's writings of familiars in the common sense of the term. I believe there are passages dealing with the transformations of the astral body, but I think that is the closest it gets. Likewise the literature of the various 1st gen. Golden Dawn alumni; I recall no mention of familiars or any special relationship to animals other than mentioning them as elemental-type souls or referring to thought forms in animal shape.

Poelzig - Jul 09, 2008 - 08:49 AM
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My working definition of "Familiar" would be a specific animal (or animals) with whom one has an ongoing relationship of an occult nature.

Your familiar will turn up in dreams or scrying at significant junctures, or on the physical plane consistently provide comfort and occasionally significant "communication" (albeit nonverbal).

I have experienced this too many times to be dismissive of it. But then I tend to have closer emotional connections with animals than I do with humans.

I have seen animals, especially cats, respond and react significantly to occult workings.

Walterfive - Jul 09, 2008 - 04:01 PM
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Yes, but not in the manner you're accquainted with. In a footnote in "Outside The Circles Of Time", Kenneth Grant describes Liber LXX vel Sauros Batrachou as "a grimoire described by Crowley as 'the ceremony proper to the obtaining of a familiar spirit a mercurial nature as described in the Apocalypse of St. John the Divine from a frog or toad."

Appearantly the ritual required the crucifixion of a frog or toad, definitely *not* the way to gain favor with Hecate.... Shocked

But there you have it, Crowley's discussion of the obtaining of a familiar spirit.

gurugeorge - Jul 09, 2008 - 05:47 PM
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Poelzig wrote: › Crowley had an extremely shitty record of mistreatment of animals.

Where do you get that from? I know he hated cats, but by his own confession he loved dogs and had several to old age throughout his life.

Poelzig - Jul 09, 2008 - 07:11 PM
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gurugeorge wrote: ›

Poelzig wrote: › Crowley had an extremely shitty record of mistreatment of animals.

Where do you get that from? I know he hated cats, but by his own confession he loved dogs and had several to old age throughout his life.

Aside from killing cats, toads, and whatever animals he was killing at Cefalu? And aside from the big game hunting?

The cat episode alone would earn him broken kneecaps in my world.

Walterfive - Jul 09, 2008 - 08:11 PM
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That's funny, broken kneecaps, in my world would get you 5-10 in the State Pen for malicious assault with premeditated greivous bodily harm, whereas animal cruelty rarely gets one more than 2 years in said Pen; if that...

Poelzig - Jul 09, 2008 - 08:37 PM
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That is the difference between actual justice and "criminal justice." Wink

MichaelStaley - Jul 09, 2008 - 09:38 PM
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Well said, Poelzig.

lashtal - Jul 09, 2008 - 09:52 PM
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Anyone here remember when the subject of the thread in hand was "Crowley and Familiars?"

Back on topic please... There's a lengthy thread elsewhere where some members became rather exercised about issues relating to Crowley's alleged cruelty to animals.

MichaelStaley - Jul 09, 2008 - 11:05 PM
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Happy to go back on topic, Paul. Pity though that you had to say "alleged", when it's documented.

lashtal - Jul 09, 2008 - 11:09 PM
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It all goes with the "impartial" tag and a desire not to be judgmental on such value issues...

sethur666 - Jul 10, 2008 - 08:54 AM
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Well, I remember in one or other of Robert Anton Wilson's ouevre that Crowley, as a local resident, had been asked by the press about the Loch Ness Monster and described Nessie as "practically a household pet" but I'm not sure if this is a genuine quote or a Wilson invention. If genuine, trust To Mega Therion to have such a gigantic familiar....