Berashith: An Essay in Ontology, with Some Remarks on Ceremonial Magic

by Aleister Crowley, Pralixus (Editor)

First written at Delhi, 20–21 March 1902 and published in a limited edition of 200 copies at Paris in 1903 by Clarke & Bishop, this was Crowley's "first serious attempt at an essay." In his "autohagiography" The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, he describes the work: "The general idea is to eliminate the idea of infinity from our conception of the cosmos. It also shows the essential identity of Manichaeism (Christianity), Vedantism and Buddhism. Instead of explaining the universe as modifications of a unity, which itself needs explaining, I regard it as NOTHING, conceived as (illusory) pairs of contradictories. What we call a thought does not really exist at all by itself. It is merely half of nothing."

Genres: Magic, Language

20 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1903

About the author

Aleister Crowley was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, novelist, mountaineer, and painter. He founded the religion of Thelema, proclaiming himself as the prophet destined to guide humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century. A prolific writer, Crowley published extensively throughout his life.
Born Edward Alexander Crowley in Royal Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, he was raised in a wealthy family adhering to the fundamentalist Christian Plymouth Brethren faith. Crowley rejected his religious upbringing, developing an interest in Western esotericism. He attended Trinity College, Cambridge, focusing on mountaineering and poetry, and published several works during this period. In 1898, he joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, receiving training in ceremonial magic from Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Allan Bennett. His travels took him to Mexico for mountaineering with Oscar Eckenstein and to India, where he studied Hindu and Buddhist practices.
In 1904, during a honeymoon in Cairo with his wife Rose Edith Kelly, Crowley claimed to have received "The Book of the Law" from a supernatural entity named Aiwass. This text became the foundation of Thelema, announcing the onset of the Æon of Horus and introducing the central tenet: "Do what thou wilt." Crowley emphasized that individuals should align with their True Will through ceremonial magic.
After an unsuccessful expedition to Kanchenjunga in 1905 and further travels in India and China, Crowley returned to Britain. There, he co-founded the esoteric order A∴A∴ with George Cecil Jones in 1907 to promote Thelema. In 1912, he joined the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), eventually leading its British branch and reformulating it according to Thelemic principles. Crowley spent World War I in the United States, engaging in painting and writing pro-German propaganda, which biographers later suggested was a cover for British intelligence activities.
In 1920, Crowley established the Abbey of Thelema, a religious commune in Cefalù, Sicily. His libertine lifestyle attracted negative attention from the British press, leading to his expulsion by the Italian government in 1923. He spent subsequent years in France, Germany, and England, continuing to promote Thelema until his death in 1947.
Crowley's notoriety stemmed from his recreational drug use, bisexuality, and criticism of societal norms. Despite controversy, he significantly influenced Western esotericism and the 1960s counterculture, and remains a central figure in Thelema.

Reviews

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The editor (disclosure: well known to me) here corrects the various online editions of this pre-Thelemic text of Crowley's, providing additional explanatory footnotes for the more obscure, foreign, or dated references.

The source text itself is clearly an early effort, dense though not impenetrable for all that. Later published with The Sword of Song, is makes a perfect accompaniment to the slightly later essay "Science and Buddhism," which for some reason seems more widely cited. The two together make clearer Crowley's philosophical and religious standpoint at the time of the 1904 reception of Liber AL and the beginning of his transition from pseudo-Buddhist to Thelemic Mage and Prophet of the Æon of Horus.

[Conrad Bukoski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Highest quality schitzoposting in print before the Internet.

"Nobody any longer supposes that any means but that of meditation is of avail to grasp the immediate causes of our being; if some person retort that he prefers to rely on a Glorified Redeemer, I simply answer that he is the very nobody to whom I now refer.

Meditation is then the means; but only the supreme means.

The agony column of the Times is the supreme means of meeting with the gentleman in the brown billycock and frock coat, wearing a green tie and chewing a straw, who was at the soirée of the Carlton Club last Monday night; no doubt! But this means is seldom or never used in the similar contingency of a cow-elephant desiring her bull in the jungles of Ceylon.

Meditation is not within the reach of every one; not all possess the ability; very few indeed (in the West at least) have the opportunity...

When a man has evoked and mastered such forces as Taphtatharath, Belial, Amaimon, and the great powers of the elements, then he may safely be permitted to begin to try to stop thinking. For needless to say, the universe, including the thinker, exists only by virtue of the thinker’s thought.

... the Arahat is sure of being abolished in the utter extinction of Nirvana, while even the world of pain, where he must remain until the ancient causes, those which have already germinated, are utterly worked out (for even the Buddha himself could not swing back the Wheel of the Law), his certain anticipation of the approach of Nirvana is so intense as to bathe him constantly in the unfathomable ocean of the apprehension of immediate bliss.

AUM MANI PADME HOUM"

tl;dr

Meditation practice is better at answering all universal nihlistic existentialism than following the rites of any Abraham, Hindu , Buddhist, and/or Occult Practices.

[Recensioni in tre parole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Teorico. Religioso. Filosofico.