Crowley as background to Grant

[alysa]

alysa - I have moved your post to a new thread, because the thread it was in was concerning something else and it may have therefore been ignored. Your post raises a very interesting point, and thus deserves its own thread.

Best wishes,

Michael.


I want to say a few words regarding beginner's books or beginner's guides, with regard to the works of Aleister Crowley, there weren't any available in the country where I lived and I didn't want to buy them from another country, I just bought and ordered 'all' Crowley books which were available and started to read some of the books, without the beginner's books or beginner's guides, with regard to Crowley it worked relatively fine with me, though I would recommend, at least to many persons regarding Kenneth Grant's works that one should read a beginner's book related to his works first if that is an availability, or at least I think it is advisible that one has read first Crowley's works, but I learnt from Lashal.com that there are also people who never read Aleiser Crowley's works and that they just started with the works of Kenneh Grant, which I do not think recommendable regarding to my self, but there are of course other persons who do it any way, I also think there is something of more than one interest for the poetically and artistically minded in reading the works in a 'Zen-way' . . .

[Michael Staley]

This is a very interesting point, alysa.

In the mid to late 1960s I first came across Crowley's work, and over the next few years studied as much of his work as was then available. When first coming across Grant's work in 1972 (with the publication of The Magical Revival). Coming from a Crowley background, as it were, I was familiar with much of the Crowley corpus that Grant referenced.

In the 1980s I started coming across people who had read Outside the Circles of Time as their first Grant title, didn't have a background of studying Crowley's works, and got on fine with Grant's material.

[Vadge Moore]

I found that after 5 years or so of reading Crowley, when I finally found Grants Outside the Circles, though it was still difficult for me to understand, I began to intuitively understand more of Crowley and, as I explored Grant's trilogies further began to understand both men's works much more deeply.

[alysa]

Yes, thanks, Michael for removing my post to this new thread, I also thinks my post deserves that, and best wishes to you too, of course! I also would like to say that I actually don't like beginner's books or beginner's guides, who needs them and who wants them I most of the time ask myself, I also think that if you studied for example Crowley first and you came then to the study of the books of Kenneth Grant I think it feels 'normal' that the 'voice' of Crowley's works resonates in Kenneth Grant's works and the other way around of course, I also think in the end it will relate to a deeper profundity of understanding both men's works!

[Marc]

I guess everyone comes to it from a different history. I had been a Thelemite for years when I came upon Kenneth Grant's trilogies. In addition to this, I had always had a fascination with extraterrestrialism and UFOlogy. When I began reading Grant's work, I couldn't put it down. I literally locked myself up in house and read almost the whole 9 books back to back. I can't say I understood half of what I read but it opened new directions of study for me as well as presenting me with new outlooks on existing concepts I had. My study of Crowley's material as well as ET and UFO interest only intensified. In the end, I don't think it matters how one approaches the work because it is not a hierarchical evolution (GD then Crowley then Grant, etc..). Anything you read will propel you in many different directions of specialty within that context alone..pretty soon you find yourself studying 11 different subject areas all stemming from one book or one author.

Well, those were my two cents (I'm in Canada so that's more like 1.5 cents)

[Gregory Peters]

I seem to have started reading Grant shortly after discovering Crowley ( within months) thanks to a friend that loaned me a lot if material from his library back in the day, so the two went hand in hand for the most part.

[alysa]

Of course many voices resonate from Crowley's works and many more voices resonate from Kenneth Grants works, that's only just how logic works! "Anything you read will propel you in many different directions of specialty within that context alone", of course. "Pretty soon you find yourself studying 11 different subject areas all stemming from one book or one author", of course even more than 11 different subject areas (I think) all stemming from just one book or one author alone with regard to me and with regard to others as well. I just only mentioned Crowley and Kenneth Grant for convenience sake!

[Deleted]

I remember vividly the publication of The Magical Revival in 1972, because it did exactly what it said on the cover; it revived the fortunes of magick with fresh insights and observations, when the spirit had wearied of Crowley's pomposity and pretence and lifeless prose.

Had sorcerers of my generation had only Crowley's oeuvre to nurture and signpost the way for them, magick would not long have outlived the 1960s, and we should not be here now.

Crowley's writings provided a context for the Revival, before The Typhonian Trilogies went on to become a context of their own.

Grant did well to maintain TOTO as a magickal force independent of Corporate OTO and its quarrelsome factions and claims of pedigree and noble descent.  The only pedigree relevant to sorcery is the fact of fresh new contributions to the Work which carries the whole endeavour forward.

The dissolution of the old lodge system into cyberspace and the new emphasis on self-initiation has seen the end of the creaking quasi-masonic rituals of the Crowley era, with all  their conceit of oaths, charters, certificates, and titles.

Now we are made stronger by diversity. Now we have the sorcerer as Self-Appointed Man.