The Magical Record of the the Beast 666

[Deleted]

This book unintentionally establishes that Crowley the sorcerer did not survive the passing of the Belle Époque, the Edwardian era swept away by the start of the Great War in 1914.

The vitality and creativity of The Vision and the Voice is all but gone, and we see Crowley repeating operations to get money and other trivial pursuits over and over again, ends which a more robust personality would have pursued by ordinary means, such as getting a job to earn money, or dating to find a compatible girlfriend.

LAM seems to have encountered AC during the Amalantrah Working in the spring of 1918, but it was too late to halt Crowley's flight into the mediocrity charted in the Magical Record etc.  The Working itself was a shambles reminiscent of the question-and-answer format of the Victorian table-rapping craze, and it took KG to re-evaluate the contact with LAM as one of the most important developments in modern sorcery.

[Deleted]

Sorry, but it seems to me that is a rather shallow way of looking at things.

[williamxiii]

hmmm…Deleted seems to be of two minds about the issue ;-)

[Michael Staley]

May 14, 2014 14:44:07 GMT @Deleted said:

This book unintentionally establishes that Crowley the sorcerer did not survive the passing of the Belle Époque, the Edwardian era swept away by the start of the Great War in 1914.

Clearly a valid point of view (Regardie, for instance, enunciates a similar view in The Eye in the Triangle so far as I recall, not having read it for many years). However, I regard this period as the foundation from which his later insights were distilled and on which his later body of work was reared.

May 14, 2014 14:44:07 GMT @Deleted said:

The vitality and creativity of The Vision and the Voice is all but gone, and we see Crowley repeating operations to get money and other trivial pursuits over and over again, ends which a more robust personality would have pursued by ordinary means, such as getting a job to earn money, or dating to find a compatible girlfriend.

I think the American period was particularly rich, in terms for instance of the Magus initiation, the spawning of a Magical Son, Liber Aleph, the Amalantrah Working, and Crowley's rearrangement and commentary thereon of Legge's translation of the Tao Teh Ching. And some of Crowley's later work is superb - for instance, Magick in Theory and Practice, Little Essays Toward Truth, and The Book of Thoth. Yes, I agree that there are distractions, but I prefer this later period.

May 14, 2014 14:44:07 GMT @Deleted said:

LAM seems to have encountered AC during the Amalantrah Working in the spring of 1918, but it was too late to halt Crowley's flight into the mediocrity charted in the Magical Record etc.  The Working itself was a shambles reminiscent of the question-and-answer format of the Victorian table-rapping craze, and it took KG to re-evaluate the contact with LAM as one of the most important developments in modern sorcery.

I consider the Amalantrah Working as the most interesting of Crowley's workings. It is marred by Crowley's preoccupation for seeing the sessions as an oracle for his financial affairs, and I think he missed the essence of the working due to this preoccupation, but there are some real nuggets in the working that I have drawn on, particularly in regard to Achad's MA-ION.