The Revival of Magick and Other Essays. Aleister Crowley. New Falcon Publications. Soft cover. 240pp. 1998. ISBN 1-56184-133-1.

I wonder if the UK government would take advice from Aleister Crowley On the Education of Children (one of the essays in this collection). One suspects not, but should a higher light ever enter the dim bunker that is the current state of the Britannic brain, seekers might find further enlightenment from the book in question.
    “Education” writes Crowley (in 1921), “is assisting a soul to express itself. Every child should be presented with all possible problems and allowed to register his own reactions; it should be made to face all contingencies in turn until it overcomes each successfully.”
    He concludes: “Mediocrity, self-styled morality, protects the unfit, but prevents progress, discourages adaptability, and assures ultimate ruin to the race. Standards of education, ideals of Right and Wrong, conventions, creeds, codes, stagnate Mankind. Encourage original individuals. Beware of squaring the Keystone, or heaving it over among the rubbish! Mediocrity wanted Keats druggist, Gaugin banker, Clive clerk, Mohammed camel-man!”
    Edward Alexander Crowley (pen name ‘Aleister’, 1875-1947) was a superb polemical writer, in many respects a ‘writers’ writer’, so far was he removed from the common mind of his (and certainly our) time.
    His lucid thought frequently found expression in masonic-style maxims and images – the reference to the Keystone above is one of many examples. In his Confessions Crowley writes of having received the 33° of the Scottish Rite from Don Jesus de Medina in Mexico City in 1900, having entered Craft Masonry in Paris at the invitation of the chaplain to the British Embassy.
    For the UGLE, Lodge No 343 ‘Anglo-Saxon’ was an irregular lodge, but that did not stop a member of a regular English Provincial lodge from joining it. Crowley also worked as Inspector General to Grand Hierophant 97° John Yarker’s (‘irregular’) Rite of Memphis and Mizraim.
    Yarker had been a bona fide UGLE member. Crowley was one of the few distinguished initiates (1898) of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a magical order for men and women founded by regular British Freemasons in the late 1880s to pursue neo-Rosicrucian, theosophical and occult interests.
    Following press smears and prurient speculations regarding Crowley’s revival of pagan Theurgy in London, New York and Sicily before and after World War I, the UGLE shunned Crowley like the proverbial plague, refusing to recognise him as a Mason. We might know more about this conflict but for the fact that Crowley’s correspondence with Grand Lodge from the 1920s and 1930s was destroyed by a late librarian of the Grand Lodge Library – with all the zeal (and historical indifference) of the orthodox inquisitor.
    This is all, arguably, a great shame. By shunning “the demon Crowley”, regular Freemasonry may have been ejecting something vital of its own soul. It is clear that many who worked against Crowley’s para-psychological religion of Thelema (=Will; Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Thou hast no right but to do thy will. Love is the law, love under will. Every man and every woman is a star.) did so because he, like Nietzsche, considered organised Christian dogma to be an historical disaster for the progress of humanity.
    Furthermore, in the words of Dr Christopher McIntosh, Crowley’s path “was through sex and humour, neither of which find favour in the West when combined with religion - hence the vilification which has been heaped on Crowley’s head.”
    In America, the position is somewhat different. Crowley’s non-conformity to what was expected of an Englishman gives him a certain lustre, and among some educated Americans he is regarded simply as an English philosopher.
    This is an accurate (if limited) description of a man who tried to realise within himself the promise of gnosis, and what he regarded as the deeper wisdom of universal Freemasonry. Partly as a result of Crowley’s Falstaffian/Gargantuan sense of humour, and the paradoxical character of Thought/Wisdom and his lying Ape, the question will always remain for readers of Crowley’s many works: was he in good faith?
    This reviewer cannot possibly answer that question for you. Crowley remains a riddle, and one suspects he would have liked that. Properly understood, Masonry itself is also a riddle, and is in no position to judge the riddles of her children.
    The Revival of Magick, a very readable and fascinating collection of Crowley’s essays, was written mainly for long-since defunct magazines between World War One and the spiritually thirsty Thirties.
    It has been put together by William Breeze (of the US-based Ordo Templi Orientis – a masonically irregular and unrecognised body by UGLE) and Richard Kaczynski PhD. Their editing is judicious and almost excessively informative – a footnote tells us who the Prophet Mohammed was, including his dates.
    Crowley’s fevered pen, with all the spring of a gazelle and the feisty grit of a mighty Victorian explorer, ranges (as we should expect) far and wide, high and low: from the sub-atomic dance to the “deserts of vast eternity”.
    Among the 31 essays chosen (a not insignificant number), we have the author’s views – sometimes flippant, sometimes profound - on Psychoanalysis, Hinduism, Mysticism, Art, Clairvoyance, World War One, Magick, Education and Problems of Government.
    There is also a Letter to Henry Ford, attempting (vainly, no doubt) to get the master of mass production involved with his workers’ mastery of individual destiny: surely a classic of the optimistic mood.
    Crowley’s cheek – and vision – knew no bounds. His humour is a constant companion on his sceptical path to enlightenment: “What is the cause of the deep spiritual discontent that mars the marvellous material welfare of your people of the great United States?” he asks Henry Ford.
    “What, but this, that having attained the means of enjoyment and advancement, they know no purpose worthy of their endeavour? They know not their True Wills.
    “Look back upon the Middle Ages! Ignorance, poverty, dirt, disease; oppression, superstition and disorder. Yet, in their myriad ills, what beauty, what attainment! Each worker a proud craftsman; in his leisure, rapt in music; his faith a living light, his eternal romance.
    “His mind was not debauched by newspapers, with their incessant glorification of riches, crime and fashion, their ghoulish clamour for war, their scandal-mongering as of barren hags, and their muck-raking as of unwholesome schoolboys.”
    Some readers will never ‘crack their way into’ Crowley’s masterful exercise of ironic paradox; they will have to settle for newspaper reading, fit for a portion of chips, but not as nourishing. I prefer to eat Crowley’s words as an occasional snack, with lashings of vinegar and the salt of the earth.
    For those who would like to know something of the unique mind of Aleister Crowley, often expressed clearly in his own words, this book is not a bad place to start.
    Tobias Churton