Would I be correct in assuming that those interested in Crowley would be also usually gravitate to those things in literature, music, poetry and movies considered to be 'gothic'?
If so, why?
For those interested here is Six of the Horror world's leading figures dine together. Hosted by Clive Barker with guests John Carpenter, Roger Corman, Ramsey Campbell, Lisa Tuttle and Pete Atkins
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
Would I be correct in assuming that those interested in Crowley would be also usually gravitate to those things in literature, music, poetry and movies considered to be 'gothic'?
I doubt it. 'Gothic' is a somewhat wide category (gloom, the grotesque, the supernatural, etc). For instance, whilst yes I am interested in what passes for the supernatural (a misnomer if ever there was one), my laugh-a-minute persona means that I am only gloomy when someone doesn't get my latest scintillating pun, whilst millions of women around the world would react with uncontrollable mirth at the notion that I was grotesque (au contraire, they would sigh).
So no, I think not. I'll be interested to see what others think.
Is gloominess associated with 'the gothic'? What is 'gothic'? Lycanthropy, vampires, ghosts and anything 'creepy'? Apparently Lutheran-German cathedrals are gothic because they are high and tall and dark, like trees in traditional German forests. I would say that the work of the writer Stephen King is all about being gothic. I tend to think that 'gothic' can be defined as that place where people won't go whereas 'weirdos' will and this sums up Crowley's literary works and interests.
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
Gothic is all things dark and depressing. Gloomy, old, dusty, decrepit. Abandoned.
I don't think Crowley is very Gothic at all. In fact he could be said to be the opposite, very life-affirming.
Little Sunshine.
The root of the endonym, Goth, can be traced furthest back to the proto-indo-european ǵʰewd- which has been reconstructed as meaning 'to pour'.
To pour what? The adept's blood into the graal of Babalon?
The action of pouring, in my mind, conjures flashes of orgiastic paroxysms dancing through the flesh of maenads. It's a bacchanalian thing, to me. So, I suppose, Crowley was 'Gothic' in that sense.
This contrasts violently against the modern Goth, who strikes me as being a very repressed person.
I like gothic architecture and I like Crowley. I have never thought of those two together.
As I walk around London I see Goths that sometimes wear occult symbols. I really like Goths. I work near Camden and my job is to poke the holes into the centre of doughnuts, but no Goth has ever ridiculed me for my lowly job.
My current passion is baroque or rococo architecture, which is best seen in Last Year In Marienbad.
One perhaps could say all initiates are Goth on the inside on occasion. As the Trance of Sorrow or Dark Night of the Soul can attest. I wonder if we could pick out some particularly 'Gothic' Crowley verse?
my job is to poke the holes into the centre of doughnuts
You poor man; sounds onerous indeed.
Have your capitalist masters ever considered making the donuts by rolling "snakes", and forming them in circles, the way they make bagels?
They do so with great facility fairly near you in the East End, if you dare go there (perhaps the notorious Jamie B will act as your Savage Native Guide?). There is one quite famous 24-hour spot there with excellent bagels, though skinnier than the (correct) NYC variety.
Or would this put you out of a job?
no Goth has ever ridiculed me for my lowly job.
Well, thanx be unto the gods for that, and good for those working-class-solidarity-displaying Goths.
I have worn a lot of black since i started buying my own clothes, wore eye-liner often as a much younger man, and have sometimes had funny haircuts. I hate horror anything that is not Lovecraft, or maybe Nosferatu. I think killing vampires with a stake through the heart sounds commendable, and wanting to be seen as "dark" or "evil" is in my opinion stupid as fuck. I am thus maybe Goth-ish, or Goth-adjacent, but definitely not a Goth. I have been friends with several though.
the modern Goth, who strikes me as being a very repressed person.
I've asked myself why I think this, so allow me to lay it on you. Consider the semiotics of darkness to the average, uninitiated person, still reeling in the last aeon. All 'shameful' acts (which incidentally incorporate a hole in some way), fornication and defecation we'll use for example, are relegated in both psyche and life to dark places, to hiding places. It's hard to be seen in darkness, think. Crimes like murder, rape and thievery are conflated in the mind with nighttime and its darkness.
The darkness, to the benighted, is there to hide shame. So when I see a goth, who dresses darkly and acts darkly and seemingly tries to take the comfort of darkness with them by externalizing it, of course I think to myself that the poor creature lives in shame.
I'm sure there is a liberated minority that only cares for the aesthetic, though.
I had a goth girlfriend a while back, when I was living up around ignant's neck of the woods. Her friends all dressed like freaks, but on the soft, nougaty inside they espoused the same mainstream, ultramoralized ideas as any bore. No weird ideas about the universe. I saw it as hypocrisy. Though I was more involved with physics than metaphysics back then, myself.
Anyway, she was a downer, liked me a little too much, and had some brain condition that gave her a migraine every single day. It all started to give me a headache, so I cut her loose.
which incidentally incorporate a hole in some way
Like doughnuts, and bagels. Paging Georges Bataille! Did you want eggs with that bagel, hon?
Like @djedi, i have, in the long-distant days when i did such things, had sexual congress (though never a relationship relationship) with young women of the Goth persuasion. Often good fun; the one who insisted on either Gregorian chants, or Nine Inch Nails, as the soundtrack to days of non-stop drug-fueled perversion, and is now a well-known NYC psychoanalyst, specializing in sexual issues, and drug problems, brings back particularly fond memories.
The main thing about Goths is that they are fundamentally very silly. This particularly clear in tropical places like Brazil, where leather trousers, overcoat, and white pancake make-up, in the middle of summer, is no joke.
that sounds cool; thank you.
When you write work emails too fast, thank you becomes than you. Then they think you are comparing yourself to them....
Nine Inch Nails, as the soundtrack to days of non-stop drug-fueled perversion
NIN is the best, man. I have had some procedures in those realms. But I am above it. I was down in it.
very silly
And also here in sunny Cali-rado.
Me and wifey are driving and see them folks .
We admire them for their fortitude in the face of such weather but ...yes.
We like to see them as one likes to see baby lion cubs in an aquarium.
Good luck chaps.
Any human could go through a goth-fashion makeover, even your mom and dad...and everyone else would think 'Hey look, goths'. It isn't about the outside, look at Stephen King for example. I suppose guy-liner is Thelemic because I consider anything Egyptological to be Thelemic and the Pharaohs and their priests would've been into it. I dunno, how would you even define that which is 'gothic' in literature or poetry? Did AC write poems similar to Rimbaud? Yes I guess he did. I never really got into Edgar Allen Poe.
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
@dom
'It's not about the outside'
I agree, pretty much what I posted
What do people think about most initiates being Gothic on the inside off and on?
I must go through 'Collected Works'
Love Poe, i guess he is Horror-y. Anyone who has not recently read/re-read "Masque of the Red Death" should, available online free as being in the public domain.
If you are American, Brazilian, or to a somewhat lesser extent British, it will read like a newspaper: elites ignoring a plague which will soon destroy them.
Gothic is all things dark and depressing.
This is the current take, and it reeks of dungeons.
Gothic originally referred to the Goths, who were not black-lipsticked, black-clothed girls, or black t-shirted universal hexagram boys ... No indeed, they were from Gotland (God's Land), a big island off the east coast of Sweden. Like all northers, they were conquerors (mostly by land, the so-called Vikings took to the sea).
They basically took over Europe. The Ostrogoths (Austogoths) moved down through Germany on the East side of those Alps, to Austria. The Visigoths moved west down into France. Maybe I have those names crossed. They kicked Rome's butt and took over for a while.
"The Ostrogoths (Latin: Ostrogothi, Austrogothi) were a Roman-era Germanic people.In the 5th century, they followed the Visigoths in creating one of the two great Gothic kingdoms within the Roman Empire, based upon the large Gothic populations who had settled in the Balkans in the 4th century, having crossed the Lower Danube. While the Visigoths had formed under the leadership of Alaric I ..."
- Wiki
I bring this older, more basic and truly-derived from God's Island definition because I am proud of my Gothic lineage (on both sides of those Alps) and wish to protest against creepy dungeonized, black lip-sticked pretenders. This Chamber of Horror, along with The Goetia, are mere reminiscences of the real horror ... the Goths and the Vikings came from the same general area. It was really a bad time in your village when they came to town. They could be compared to the "Hell's Angels MC Group" coming to town in a bad mood and suffering from Mead or Ale intoxication.
Returning to the Orig Topik: It doesn't matter what I think. The only thing that is true lies in experience. "It was my experience" tells me that when I first came into contact with Thelemic books, between ages 23 - 29, I was fascinated by Crowley's Goetia and Mathers' Abramelin book, especially the talismans and the demons, both of which were in print and relatively cheap (1963-69 era). I did not work with this stuff for various reasons, except a little when required.
I never had any attraction to Spare or this Lovecraft fellow, Shakespeare, the medieval and proto-modern philosophers, and many other areas that Crowley-inspired people go.
However, this was NOT before the Gothic archetype of gloom arose, as mentioned by djedi, but it WAS before the "Gothic" vampire appearance became popular The Visigoths. Like music, I was past my cultural style programming imprint vulnerability zone in "cultural rebellion."
[enter]
This contrasts violently against the modern Goth, who strikes me as being a very repressed person.
Interesting point about 'pouring'. Repressed person? The goth girls where I go wear short skirts, fishnet tights and their breasts are generally ready to pop out of their tops, I don't view that as being repressed.
I doubt it. 'Gothic' is a somewhat wide category (gloom, the grotesque, the supernatural, etc). For instance, whilst yes I am interested in what passes for the supernatural (a misnomer if ever there was one), my laugh-a-minute persona means that I am only gloomy when someone doesn't get my latest scintillating pun, whilst millions of women around the world would react with uncontrollable mirth at the notion that I was grotesque (au contraire, they would sigh).
So no, I think not. I'll be interested to see what others think
Gloom is not gothic and vice versa. I guess being chained to a table whilst a gigantic pendulum is swinging down lower and lower (Poe reference) is sorta gloomy yes but the notion that all goths are depressive is as bullshit as all heavy rock guys are destructively angry and emotionally stunted.
@all On the point about inside/outside think Phyliss Seckler, she didn't dress like Lilly Munster but she was very much into Thelema .
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
short skirts, fishnet tights and their breasts
Modest and Immodest are two sides of the same coin. Two coping mechanisms for the same hang-up. That's what experience has taught me about people, anyway.
However, this was NOT before the Gothic archetype of gloom arose,
I'd like to hear more about this, if you'd allow me to ask you to elaborate on it. Do you mean beatniks? Maynard G. Krebs? Or something bigger?
short skirts, fishnet tights and their breasts
Modest and Immodest are two sides of the same coin. Two coping mechanisms for the same hang-up. That's what experience has taught me about people, anyway.
Actually, yes you could be right, why take bedroom wares outside in public if it isn't a problem in the bedroom or headroom?
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
Do you mean beatniks? Maynard G. Krebs? Or something bigger?
No, much smaller. A paragraph got inserted before the one you question. I could not understand what I written (in which contexts?)? So I went back to read the whole post and became thoroughly confused ... undone by my own dim wit.
Then, one of the Angels came to me and showed me what I meant in my writ. To avoid all confusion, I will now rephrase, in anal format, the idea I wished to explain.
I was past my adolescence and young adulthood when the medieval vampire style "Goth" came into play ... and was therefore not affected because I thought it to be a bunch of crap.
I actually saw real Beatniks and dunno about Crabs. I do not mean them. I referred to "Goths" as a particular cultural identification. It is, of course, just another act of illusion and (especially) glamour.
I will now remind us of the safest form of cultural association. It was a rule among those crafty RC brethren: "Always wear the robe of the country in which you are traveling."
Maybe somebody never heard that one, but surely they've heard: "When in Rome, dress as the Romans do."
Beatniks, Hippies, Punks, Goths ... these are the names of mighty archetypes. Today, they are referred to as Millennial and Generation X, a much more digital configuration.
but the notion that all goths are depressive is as bullshit as all heavy rock guys are destructively angry and emotionally stunted.
I don't recall suggesting that all goths are depressive.
dunno about Crabs
This means Shiva had stopped watching TV by 1959, when Dobie Gillis premiered (and i was born). This seems totally plausible; i last watched TV regularly in the first Reagan administration, and last watched a new TV show in maybe 1976.
"Once they've astral traveled/How ya gonna get 'em to watch TV?" [to be sing to the tune of "How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down On The Farm (After They've Seen Paree)?"]
"Always wear the robe of the country in which you are traveling."
Yes, this is the best policy. Even in my most punk days, i never wore outlandish things ( i was too poor for one thing). Plain, simple, mostly black clothes- i have been described as dressing "old-school preppy", and "punk-rock Amish".
"If you are a criminal, don't look like a [intercoursing] criminal", as an early mentor in deviating taught me; see also "One crime at a time" [if there are drugs or guns in the car, eg., scrupulously obey all traffic laws, and be polite to other drivers].
Good advice for all deviators, including the ones who imagine they aren't criminals (trust me, they have lots of laws, and can get you on something), and being surveilled by "the Man", too.
think Phyliss Seckler, she didn't dress like Lilly Munster but she was very much into Thelema .
Nor - who's that other cliche? Morticia Addams. The only photographs I've ever seen of PS reminded me of a winsome, thoroughly inoffensive traditional 'grandmother/granny' type. One could easily imagine her having just baked a fresh batch of apple pies on her range and being on the point of serving it at table to her very normal and respectable middle class 'nuclear' family... about as far away from a satanic archetype as it would be possible for you to imagine - "the acceptable face of Thelema", no less. But quite a sharp cookie, all the same.
Unless of course I'm getting her all muddled up with somebody else?
Norma N Joy Conquest
This means Shiva had stopped watching TV by 1959
This is correct. Now, around 1965, Solar Lodge got a color-stable TV. Color is MUCH more addictive than B&W. We became addicted. We only watched one show. It was called Star Trek. After that I had no TV for a long time. Now I have none. TV could have been a wonderful tool, but I guess The Black Lodge funded it from infancy ... or maybe late monkey-stage third circuit potential for profit and propaganda.
The only photographs I've ever seen of PS reminded me of a winsome, thoroughly inoffensive traditional 'grandmother
Surely you've seen this one? Pre-Granny status ...
Wolfe, Seckler, Germer
Color is MUCH more addictive than B&W.
I know i recently for some reason mentioned my old bass player's high school pal Richard, known as "Dick Head". At one point in the mid-'80s, he was living in a group apartment in Brooklyn. We (me, the first wife, his pal my bass player) went to a party there. "Dick Head" was talking to us in the kitchen, and playing "free jazz" riffs on his sax.
He had an enormous (for the time, like a 32" cathode screen) Sony Trinitron color TV, which was in the living room. This color TV was only allowed by him to be used for watching the nightly Channel 11 rerun of '50s show The Honeymooners, a black and white half hour program.
Through his sax riffing, and the loud punk rock playing on a stereo in the living room, he somehow heard the sound of the TV being on, when it was not between 11:30 and midnight on a weeknight. He put down his sax, and left the room.
Apparently, he took the TV, and tossed it out the front window into the street. Fortunately it was a quiet neighborhood and no one was passing by to have it fall on their head; it was not so quiet a neighborhood that anyone would care about a little thing like that if it did not fall on someone's head. We had stayed in the kitchen near the beer, but did hear a loud explosion as the tube exploded 4 stories down. He came back, saying nothing of this matter, and continued conversating, and skronking on his sax.
A simple banishing ritual we can all emulate, hopefully in a way more considerate of passers-by. And of course clarifies how "Dick Head" got his name, which as you may recall, his own mother recognized as "his name", although she did not call him by it, being his mom.
"Dick Head" ... had an enormous (for the time, like a 32" cathode screen) Sony Trinitron color TV, which was in the living room. ... Apparently, he took the TV, and tossed it out the front window into the street. Fortunately it was a quiet neighborhood and no one was passing by to have it fall on their head; it was not so quiet a neighborhood that anyone would care about a little thing like that if it did not fall on someone's head. We had stayed in the kitchen near the beer, but did hear a loud explosion as the tube exploded 4 stories down. He came back, saying nothing of this matter, and continued conversating, and skronking on his sax.
There are some who would no doubt consider this the very epitome, the ne plus ultra of cool.
Surely you've seen this one? Pre-Granny status ...
"Granny in the making", in fact, in the company of her elders...
N Joy
There are some who would no doubt consider this the very epitome, the ne plus ultra of cool.
Well, i will admit to then, and now, finding it quite amusing, especially the sheer nonchalance of his doing it, but as i said, it illustrates why dude's own mother knew him as "Dick Head"- he was one. And NYC was the Wild West back then- it was not all that odd for a TV, or anything else, to come hurtling out a 4th story window- folks knew to look up.
I once watched my weed connect jump out of the way of a plummeting air conditioner as i waited in the doorway of a bar for him to hit me off. He was 20' away from me, and nimble. And this was like 10 years ago, not in The Bad Old Days.
I do my weekly Plague Times Zoom call with the boys from that old band tomorrow night, so i will inquire as to what "Dick Head" has been up to lo these many years. Their moms probably still talk even if they don't.
When last heard from, he was a trainer in E.S.T. (or "an EST-icle" as we called him), and i think he continued with that when it became The Forum or whatever. He was consistent in his asshole-ism.
The characters in parables are not always admirable, especially if they are my parables, due to my bad choices in associates, and bad life-choices.
When last heard from, he was a trainer in E.S.T.
EEeek!
bad choices in associates, and bad life-choices.
All is in divine order. Seek not the cracks in your foundation, but just look at where you're at now. Our sins were all forgiven when we joined the Crowley side.
Did AC write poems similar to Rimbaud?
Hey, don't mention the prophet and the other prophet in the same sentence, the universe might blow up. 😳
.
A simple banishing ritual we can all emulate, hopefully in a way more considerate of passers-by. And of course clarifies how "Dick Head" got his name, which as you may recall, his own mother recognized as "his name", although she did not call him by it, being his mom.
He sounds like one of Lashtal's Spring entrants.
Hey, don't mention the prophet and the other prophet in the same sentence, the universe might blow up. 😳
Yes.
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
@dom
Some of my utterances on this forum relate to my own personal bizarre experiences and thoughts and will only be baffling and silly to others, 😛 too bad!
Anyway, as the subject of the "other prophet" has come up, I found a nice essay on Rimbaud's "alchemy of the word" which may be of interest to some. The site is no longer up but I found a version on the internet archive (may be slow to load):
http://poeticsresearch.com/article/brian-kim-stefans-the-alchemy-of-the-world-rimbaud-and-revolutionary-artifice /" target="true">Brian Kim Stefans - The Alchemy of the World: Rimbaud and Revolutionary Artifice
Quite a long read but worth it.
@dom
Some of my utterances on this forum relate to my own personal bizarre experiences and thoughts and will only be baffling and silly to others, 😛 too bad!
Anyway, as the subject of the "other prophet" has come up, I found a nice essay on Rimbaud's "alchemy of the word" which may be of interest to some. The site is no longer up but I found a version on the internet archive (may be slow to load):
http://poeticsresearch.com/article/brian-kim-stefans-the-alchemy-of-the-world-rimbaud-and-revolutionary-artifice /" target="true">Brian Kim Stefans - The Alchemy of the World: Rimbaud and Revolutionary Artifice
Quite a long read but worth it.
I didn't know that Rimbaud was considered to be a prophet. The link doesn't work btw.
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
The link doesn't work btw.
lets try it again:
http://poeticsresearch.com/article/brian-kim-stefans-the-alchemy-of-the-world-rimbaud-and-revolutionary-artifice /"> https://web.archive.org/web/20190418222055/http://poeticsresearch.com/article/brian-kim-stefans-the-alchemy-of-the-world-rimbaud-and-revolutionary-artifice/
edit: I don't know why it displays it twice like that but the second one with "web.archive.org" works
This is the current take, and it reeks of dungeons.
Gothic originally referred to the Goths, who were not black-lipsticked, black-clothed girls, or black t-shirted universal hexagram boys ... No indeed, they were from Gotland (God's Land), a big island off the east coast of Sweden. Like all northers, they were conquerors (mostly by land, the so-called Vikings took to the sea).
They basically took over Europe. The Ostrogoths (Austogoths) moved down through Germany on the East side of those Alps, to Austria. The Visigoths moved west down into France. Maybe I have those names crossed. They kicked Rome's butt and took over for a while.
That's the anthropomorphic take on it yes The Goths i.e Germanic barbarians.
With help from wiki I see that the term 'Gothic' became something else with the rise of the novel and The Romantic Movement. Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled (in its second edition) "A Gothic Story" sort of set the ball rolling. A light hearted (sic) tale about Manfred, lord of the castle, and his family. The book begins on the wedding-day of his sickly son Conrad and princess Isabella. Shortly before the wedding, however, Conrad is crushed to death by a gigantic helmet that falls on him from above. This inexplicable event is particularly ominous in light of an ancient prophecy, "that the castle and lordship of Otranto should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it". Manfred, terrified that Conrad's death signals the beginning of the end for his line, resolves to avert destruction by marrying Isabella himself, while divorcing his current wife...and so on....reminds of some historical Stephen King story.
Some decades before Before AC's birth we saw Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the works of Edgar Allan Poe ( who was inspired by Byronic Romanticism) as well as Charles Dickens with his novella, A Christmas Carol, and in poetry in the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Lord Byron.
Another well known novel in this genre, dating from the late Victorian era, (when AC was a young man) is the Irishman Bram Stoker's Dracula. Stoker as you know was a fellow in The Golden Dawn. However the Vampire craze in literature was triggered decades earlier by Polidori's The Vampyre (1819), featuring the Byronic Lord Ruthven. The Vampyre has been accounted by cultural critic Christopher Frayling as one of the most influential works of fiction ever written and spawned a craze for vampire fiction and theatre (and latterly film) which has not ceased to this day.
Why the German i.e Gothic connection? Those stories generally took place in that part of the world (e.g. Frankenstein) I guess due to the ominous castles and long, dark, ominous and thin Cathedral spires which I believe, some say, were made to reflect the dark German forests.
Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1847) transports the Gothic to the forbidding Yorkshire Moors and features ghostly apparitions and a Byronic hero in the person of the demonic Heathcliff. The Brontës' fiction is seen by some feminist critics as prime examples of Female Gothic, exploring woman's entrapment within domestic space and subjection to patriarchal authority and the transgressive and dangerous attempts to subvert and escape such restriction. I guess the Romantic era rediscovery of Shakespeare would've informed everyone interested that such themes of the macabre and the occult (ghosts etc) go way back.
At the time when AC had graduated from Cambridge and was very much involved in poetry saw the revival of the Gothic as a powerful literary form allied to fin de siecle, which fictionalized contemporary fears like ethical degeneration and questioned the social structures of the time. Classic works of this Urban Gothic include Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), George du Maurier's Trilby (1894), Richard Marsh's The Beetle (1897), Henry James' The Turn of the Screw (1898), and the stories of Arthur Machen. ....so in short anything ominous, ghostly, creepy. macabre and sometimes horrible would be viewed as being 'Gothic'. Of course this would go on in the 20th century to become the genre known as 'horror' in Hollywood.
To be direct about it, the incorporation of Buddhist disease and death meditations in the A'A' curriculum would make AC 'gothic' but Thelema per se 'gothic' in that respect? No.
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
Goths i.e Germanic barbarians.
They came from Gotland, an Island east of Sweden. They became "Germanic" (and "Frankish" et al) after they moved in from up north. They were not Huns, Slavs, or Rus ... they were a form of Viking, and yes, they settled down everywhere and Europe (especially including Germany and Austria and France. So the sunny southern estates looked north and said, "The Goths are coming from Germany and France" ... so they must be German?
Would I be correct in assuming that those interested in Crowley would be also usually gravitate to those things in literature, music, poetry and movies considered to be 'gothic'?
If so, why?
For those interested here is Six of the Horror world's leading figures dine together. Hosted by Clive Barker with guests John Carpenter, Roger Corman, Ramsey Campbell, Lisa Tuttle and Pete Atkins
My instinctive "feel" for Crowley is only the late-Victorian cum Edwardian decadent, Beardsley, Oscar Wilde aesthetic. I, personally, have felt goth and gothic, but I never felt Crowley belonged to gothic. Honestly, I don't know why he would be associated with it at all.
My instinctive "feel" for Crowley is only the late-Victorian cum Edwardian decadent, Beardsley, Oscar Wilde aesthetic. I, personally, have felt goth and gothic, but I never felt Crowley belonged to gothic. Honestly, I don't know why he would be associated with it at all.
'Gothic' has become an umbrella term.
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
'Gothic' has become an umbrella term.
Yes, is there anything it doesn't incorporate ?
Norma N Joy Conquest
'Gothic' has become an umbrella term.
Yes, is there anything it doesn't incorporate ?
Norma N Joy Conquest
Maybe check out my wikipedia article definition above.
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
Oh, alright then...
....so in short anything ominous, ghostly, creepy. macabre and sometimes horrible would be viewed as being 'Gothic'.
So at a stretch that would be everything of the shadowy 'dark side' then - excluding anything more precise and all which might be regarded as being more 'sunshiney' instead: light, carefree, easygoing, pleasant?
*thinks* That's a pretty broad (golfing?) umbrella...
N Joy
I believe golfing, and thus golf umbrellas, are forbidden to Goths, as potentially leading to exposure to sunlight, and thus ruining one's pale complexion. Although of course there are black Goths who not have to worry about this- wonder if they golf?
Oh, alright then...
....so in short anything ominous, ghostly, creepy. macabre and sometimes horrible would be viewed as being 'Gothic'.
So at a stretch that would be everything of the shadowy 'dark side' then - excluding anything more precise and all which might be regarded as being more 'sunshiney' instead: light, carefree, easygoing, pleasant?
*thinks* That's a pretty broad (golfing?) umbrella...
N Joy
Instead of attempts at disruptive snipey smart-assed niggling, read my extensive post about the history of Gothic literature etc (posted 31/07/2020 4:29 pm) as well as the other posts here e.g. Shiva's contribution unless of course you want to devolve into your former troll-self that is.
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
*thinks* That's a pretty broad (golfing?) umbrella...
Yes. I have demon-straighted that the original Goths were Vikings. That's pretty specific and can be verified when you report for DNA testing. Then it moved to Gothic architecture. After that, it moved into a broad definition of dungeons and malign spirits. Finally, it spread to include people who were pale, dressed in black, and enjoyed body piercing jewelry. Yeah, that's a pretty big bumbershoot, but that is what is going 'round these days.
I believe golfing, and thus golf umbrellas, are forbidden to Goths
Is the All Things Gothic thread now about all things that aren't gothic? This must be that "occult law of reversal" that Christians are always sputtering about.
Hmm...
Picking out drapes is not gothic.
Going to the circus is not gothic.
Dying in a mudslide is not gothic.
I believe golfing, and thus golf umbrellas, are forbidden to Goths
Is the All Things Gothic thread now about all things that aren't gothic? This must be that "occult law of reversal" that Christians are always sputtering about.
Hmm...
Picking out drapes is not gothic.
Going to the circus is not gothic.
Dying in a mudslide is not gothic.
Picking out drapes is gothic if they are those thick velvety ones..black or dark crimson of course.
Going to the circus is gothic if it's a creepy gas station carnival in an abandoned countryside.
Dying in a mudslide is gothic if you were searching for your lost Lenore by doing so.
I believe golfing, and thus golf umbrellas, are forbidden to Goths, as potentially leading to exposure to sunlight, and thus ruining one's pale complexion. Although of course there are black Goths who not have to worry about this- wonder if they golf?
My wife tries to stay pale so she uses a parasol. It looks fairly gothic. Tans are unhealthy anyway.
Is the All Things Gothic thread now about all things that aren't gothic? This must be that "occult law of reversal" that Christians are always sputtering about.
Only if we let any trolls disrupt and go off topic, yes.
Adolescent Crowley kept a skeleton and fed it blood sacrifices in his London apartment (from Colin Wilson's bio Aleister Crowley the Nature of the Beast page 50 Chapter ' Raising Hell' ; Aquarian Press 1987) is that 'gothic'?
When the Babylonian version of Satan is dictating a book to you from over your right shoulder in your Cairo hotel room is that 'gothic'? Maybe it isn't.
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
Adolescent Crowley kept a skeleton and fed it blood sacrifices in his London apartment (from Colin Wilson's bio Aleister Crowley the Nature of the Beast page 50 Chapter ' Raising Hell') is that 'gothic'?
Reminds me of Hellraiser. What if he had killed people for the skeleton instead of giving it 'inert' blood? What would have happened!? 🙂 That is sort of Goth actually.
This must be that "occult law of reversal" that Christians are always sputtering about.
I haven't heard that one yet, but I'm not around any sputtering Christfolk. I suppose it's the same as the yin-yang deal, and AC's rule of opposite thinking.
But then, we enjoy paradox, while the Christfolk want a clear, non-dual, centered on Jesus, paradigm.
Dying in a mudslide is not gothic.
It is ... if the mud is inhabited or sent by dark forces who want to eat your soul ... slowly.
Picking out drapes is gothic if they are those thick velvety ones..black or dark crimson of course.
The first Solar Lodge temple was window-opaqued, dark red, velvet drapes.
Tans are unhealthy anyway.
Yes. It's called "skin cancer." It comes in a few formats, but they are all a gift of exposure to Ra's radiance.
Adolescent Crowley kept a skeleton and fed it blood sacrifices in his London apartment (from Colin Wilson's bio Aleister Crowley the Nature of the Beast page 50 Chapter ' Raising Hell') is that 'gothic'?
Reminds me of Hellraiser. What if he had killed people for the skeleton instead of giving it 'inert' blood? What would have happened!? 🙂 That is sort of Goth actually.
He killed birds in order to get the blood. Not the first time he used animal sacrifice, he would go on to do pigeons (at Bou Sada with Neuberg from Colin Wilson's bio Aleister Crowley the Nature of the Beast page 93. Chapter ' The Master and the Disciple ' ; Aquarian Press 1987)..and he later on in his existence did a frog at one stage a symbolic murdering of the Old Aeon if I'm not mistaken.
https://www.lashtal.com/wiki/Aleister_Crowley_Timeline
(from Colin Wilson's bio Aleister Crowley the Nature of the Beast page 50 Chapter ' Raising Hell' ; Aquarian Press 1987)
from Colin Wilson's bio Aleister Crowley the Nature of the Beast page 93. Chapter ' The Master and the Disciple ' ; Aquarian Press 1987)
There are other, far far better biographies around of AC than that terrible, terrible one by your sometime idol "Wilson # 2", you know! Still, you're citing references better these days...
Instead of attempts at disruptive snipey smart-assed niggling, read my extensive post about the history of Gothic literature etc (posted 31/07/2020 4:29 pm) as well as the other posts here
I have already, and I have already also inferred your definition of Gothic has expanded to such a degree as to become effectively meaningless as a topic for constructive debate. Time to begin another thread, perhaps?
unless of course you want to devolve into your former troll-self that is.
I had thought of taking you down a peg, dom, for your impertinent presumption in without any foundation whatsoever calling me a "former troll", when that was what everyone was labelling you when you first came onto LAShTAL ("the worst one ever" as I recall by somebody) - and I was the only one at that time who bothered to come to your defence and say you were 'only' an "agitator" (The comical reference for those who might not remember/be aware was to the landlord in the film The Graduate. Also rather more like myself on occasion in fact, come to think of it...)
So there's gratitude for you! However, as you actually made me chuckle out loud I've decided to show magnanimity towards you instead.
You may proceed,
N Joy