A well written article. Is it just me though or does Crowley become more fascinating the more muck is flung at him!

more of the same, but Ye Olde LAShTAL Forums do get a shout out!

Can I just add - as author of the appallingly named article above - that re my comment about John Symonds being undervalued, that anyone with an interest in tantra read his Light Over Water (John Baker, 1963)? It is dedicated to Kenneth Grant and seems to have eluded the Thelemiic dragnet.

However, Symonds' novel "The Medusa's Head" might again disabuse one of the notion of him being 'undervalued'. 

Thanks for the recommendation, joe. It's a bit pricey on the used market, but I'll keep an eye out. I'm always open to learning a little more about Symonds.

Would you care to get the ball rolling over on the "evidence only" thread?

The Medusa's Head - absolutely. His Prophecy and the Parasites, The Child and The Shaven Head are worth reading too. Re Bogus, I would like to give it a second read before I wade in with arguments from the prosecution...and the defence. Two weeks holiday in two days so I could chip in. But to be honest, I'm more concerned with thinking about AC's place in the bigger philosophical and cultural picture than with every last detail. The fact that Cole can still "do a Fuller" with the accusations he levels against him in Bogus is both very honest and open minded of him, I think. I would also imagine that most of the material Cole analyses would be mostly familiar to readers here; the really important thing is that he is trying to work out their implications on a wider scale. (The book ends with "to be continued...") No one needs to worry - Crowley is going to be around for a long, long time yet.

@joe93 - just to be clear - i was not complimenting Symonds when I mentioned The Medusa's Head. I found it terribly written and aggravating to read, not to mention that the characters - though based on historical figures - were nothing like those on whom they were based. Were I not actively researching this particular period in AC's life I would have put it down after the first few pages. The only other "non-AC biography" of Symonds I've read was his "Conversations with Gerald", which was joyful & amusing due to Hamilton's banter - but contained that similar whiff of disdain the Symonds seemed to bring to many of his projects.  Maybe it is a English thing 😉

I tried reading it but I got really bored and thought the writing was quite poor after about 40 pages. Does it get better?
It read like a high school level writer with no idea of plot construction or character development.

nm
i found my answer
Cole follows Capt. Fuller’s lead and expresses the surprising opinion that “Crowley was the single most important individual Mankind has produced in the last ten-thousand years

Even going by most Lashtalians’ customary apathy, indolence and stand-offish lurking on the threshold of commitment (save for shiva’s sacred octagon) I’m surprised no one has pointed the numerical discrepancy before:

On surveying the works of Aleister Crowley the two essential facts that grip our understanding are: firstly, the superabundance of his genius; and secondly, the diversity of his form. [p.17]

Crowley is more than a new-born Dionysus, he is more than a Blake, a Rabelais, or a Heine; for he stands before us as some priest of Apollo, hovering ‘twixt the misty blue of the heavens and the more serious purple of the vast waters of the deep. [p. 194]

God will [permit a discovery of the highest importance to be made, it must be hidden till the advent of the artist Elias.  Thus prognosticated Paracelsus.  And it is true there is nothing concealed which shall not be discovered; for which cause a marvellous being shall come after me, who as yet lives not, and who shall reveal many things.

And I for one take it that the prophecy has now been fulfilled: Aleister Crowley is the artist Elias, the marvellous being whom God has permitted to make a discovery of the highest importance in his illuminative philosophy of Crowleyanity, in the dazzling and flashing light of which there is nothing concealed which shall not be discovered.

It has taken 100,000,000 years to produce Aleister Crowley. The world has indeed laboured, and has at last brought forth a man. […] He stands on the virgin rock of Pyrrhonic-Zoroastrianhism, which unlike the Hindu world-conception stands on neither Elephant nor Tortoise, but on the Absolute Zero of the metaphysical Qabalists.

The question now is, what is Crowleyanity or Pyrrhonic-Zoroastrianism? And the answer is as follows […] And as the doctrine taught by Jesus Christ became known as Christianity, so let this theurgy, as expounded by this marvellous being, be known as Crowleyanity; or in other words, according to the mind of the reader; -Pyrrhonic-Zoroastrianism, Pyrrhonic-Mysticism, Sceptical-Transcendentalism, Sceptical-Theurgy, Sceptical-Energy, Scientific Illuminism, or what you will; for in short it is the conscious communion with God on the part of an Atheist, a transcending of reason by scepticism of the instrument, and the limitation of scepticism by direct consciousness of the Absolute. [pp. 210-12]

J.F.C. Fuller: The Star In The West (1907)[/align:hmy6uzcl]

100,000,000 by a coincidence is the product of ten thousand multiplied by ten thousand.  It is an odd figure to produce, probably through ignorance of the more recently proven scientific evidence although out by an incredible margin.  For example, it would be too short a time ago by at least a factor of 6 or 7 for the emergence of life itself in the pre-Cambrian period in the form of invertebrate jellyfish and amoebae and suchlike organisms.  It is also far too long a while for the emergence of humanity or even of our primate ancestors in any form at all.  Dinosaurs were still roaming the earth at this stage.  Recognizable (wo)mankind in the earliest shape of australopethicus did not appear till about a million years ago.  And ten thousand years would be shortly after the end of the last Ice Age and the Flood, the disappearance of neanderthal man, and the beginnings of the gradual (re)emergence of civilization from stone age culture.

Perhaps Fuller just meant to say “a long time”?  😀

I wonder if and how Fuller might have amended his position in later life.  Although he never had a rapprochement with Crowley, he apparently still respected some of his magickal and literary achievements as is evidenced by his putting together a comprehensive bibliography on the subject although his exact stance is unknown further to me and despite the aforementioned ennui I (and I’m sure others) would appreciate additional information which I’m sure would prove to be most interesting and enlightening, and especially given his involvement as the third founding member and Cancellarius of the A.’. A.’. Triad.

Numerologically yours
Norma N Joy Conquest

100,000,000 years was Lord Kelvin's estimation of the Age of the Earth at the time Fuller wrote.

I didn't know that, belmurru (or forgot that I may have read it, if I had)!  Thanks for the information.

N Joy

You're welcome. There's no reason you should have known it, since it is not common knowledge when and how the current estimates of the Earth's age came about.

The debate was ultimately settled by Uranium radiometry, in the 1940s (yes, that late). The hero of this effort is Arthur Holmes, who championed this method since 1913. Holmes was also a supporter of Alfred Wegener's ideas about "continental drift", which was similarly dismissed at the time by the consensus, but ultimately, with better theory and testable methodology, proven correct.

For this reason, Holmes has earned his bust on my desk (for geology), along with Newton (astronomy) and Darwin (biology), as my foremost heroes of science.

@belmurru where are you keeping the Oswald Spengler bust?

LOL.

Well, my desk is only so big. Spengler is in the cupboard, along with René Guenon, Pauwels and Bergier, and Baigent, Lincoln, and Leigh.

Spengler is in the cupboard

his day in the Sun having passed after a brief spell of Caesarism...

Do you think we've even got there yet? There's still a lot of steam left in the elites.

(I can hear him grumbling in the cupboard. Perhaps I should move him beside Marx and Engels, and Foucault.)

Better in the woodshed with Lenin and Lukács?