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Post by Raj Don Yasser on Nov 15, 2018 2:06:31 GMT
I recently discovered some of Churton's books on the Inner Traditions website, particularly interested in his Deconstructing Gurdieff and Aleister Crowley: Beast in Berlin. Not having any familiarity with his background I figured somebody here might be able to offer some feedback. Anybody read any of his works? Light fluff or actual meat on the bone?
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Post by stephen on Nov 15, 2018 14:09:54 GMT
Yes, there's meat on the bone. Tobias Churton is a rather flamboyant academic with a serious admiration for Crowley. I have his 2011, Aleister Crowley: The Biography. By no means is it the biography, minimal focus on the Magick, but plenty of well researched and some new material of significance on Crowley. Believe that The Beast in Berlin continues in the same vein. He made his academic name with several books on Gnosticism.
Apparently, Deconstructing Gurdjieff is his latest: reviewed in a recent Fortean Times, where it got a mixed response. Don't know whether the analogy will mean much to you, but he can come across as the Boris Johnson of esoteric studies.
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Post by Raj Don Yasser on Nov 15, 2018 17:13:20 GMT
Don't know whether the analogy will mean much to you, but he can come across as the Boris Johnson of esoteric studies.
The Boris Johnson of esoteric studies....that helps understand why so many caliphate members write such glowing reviews of his books on amazon.
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Post by stephen on Nov 16, 2018 16:07:53 GMT
Churton was given access to all of OTO Inc's Crowley material for his biography and appears to be on good terms with William Breeze. As for the literary tastes of your average caliphate member, I really could not comment.
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Post by N0T 2 on Nov 17, 2018 21:36:07 GMT
Anyone getting that much love from the Caliphate must be toeing their line, avoiding all the obvious problems in the legacy (both Crowley's and theirs), and generally reinforcing their propaganda/spam machine in order to ride the gravy train. I.e., a typical academic, rather than a scholar (let alone practitioner), like, say, Peter Koenig. I remember when Churton's first book appeared there was a wave of Caliphate faff on Spashtal even though it was basically just another redundant Crowley biography following so closely on that of Sutin - like we need any more of those.
The standards of academia are so pitifully low in this area - it's over a century and the only real scholars asking the awkward questions are Koenig and Cole, neither of whom are academics, but both of whom have between them unearthed far more detailed primary source material, and provided literate interpretations of it, than all the rest combined.
If you want a genuinely robust examination of the Crowley material, have a squiz at Richard T Cole's Liber Al vel Bogus. If you can stand the annoying way it is written, and the clearly toxic personality of the author, there is still more "meat on the bone" (if you are looking for facts and source material rather than occult interpretations or being enchanted) than any other examination of Crowley and the OTO.
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Post by stephen on Dec 7, 2018 16:10:31 GMT
With reference to NOT 2's preceding post, although it equally applies to his comments about Aiwass et AL on the 'Outside the Circles of Time' thread. It is more than clear that he is happy to go along with the assertions of Richard T. Cole's Liber L vel Bogus as if they were all neatly proven, correct and unassailable facts. This, however, is far from being the case.
I am well aware of this book and many of its arguments. I admit to not having read it; it was hardly a priority when money was short and there were more worthwhile things to spend it on, but fair enough it should not be simply ignored. For those who are unfamiliar, the following statement from Cole's Facebook page, will give the flavour of the thing:
"The issues aired in this publication are of immense significance to all with an interest in Edward Alexander Crowley, be this Magickal, mundane or monetary. If correct, they fall into the category of proper 'shit hits the fan' stuff! To my mind, it appears almost certain that there was no 'cross-examination' of Rose, no Boulak visit, no reception, no Aiwass, no Book of the Law, no lost manuscript and no Thelema. All were fantasies conjured from the mind of an obsessive psychopath, in furtherance of his grand delusion of ‘I, Crowley, the Chosen One.'" I would disagree with all of this, as I am certain that Kenneth Grant would have done. As I have not read the book its inappropriate for me to take Cole to task on his assertions, so if you want a well balanced critique/review that is not coloured by NOT 2's virulent hatred of anything Caliphate, check out the following:
www.lashtal.com/review-liber-al-vel-bogus/
Yes, I know its on lashtal, but that website is far from being a Caliphate mouthpiece and the review is by Mogg Morgan, a one time member of the Typhonian O.T.O. whose opinion I regard as being generally very sound.
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Post by sandow on Dec 7, 2018 17:01:47 GMT
Outside Crowley's bios (that I didn't read) , Churton's books on gnosticism and on Renaissance Hermeticism are quite good imho, and frequently offer original perspectives. I also liked his "Occult Paris", about people like Josephin Peladan, Stanislas de Guaïta or Papus...I would be curious to learn what he has to say about Gurdjieff...
That's probably because I'm french, I didn't understand the reference to Boris Johnson (It's true that I don't know a lot about him, outside his hard brexit support and the funny haircut :-)...
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Post by N0T 2 on Dec 8, 2018 22:49:27 GMT
With reference to NOT 2's preceding post, although it equally applies to his comments about Aiwass et AL on the 'Outside the Circles of Time' thread. It is more than clear that he is happy to go along with the assertions of Richard T. Cole's Liber L vel Bogus as if they were all neatly proven, correct and unassailable facts. This, however, is far from being the case.
I am well aware of this book and many of its arguments. I admit to not having read it; it was hardly a priority when money was short and there were more worthwhile things to spend it on, but fair enough it should not be simply ignored. For those who are unfamiliar, the following statement from Cole's Facebook page, will give the flavour of the thing:
"The issues aired in this publication are of immense significance to all with an interest in Edward Alexander Crowley, be this Magickal, mundane or monetary. If correct, they fall into the category of proper 'shit hits the fan' stuff! To my mind, it appears almost certain that there was no 'cross-examination' of Rose, no Boulak visit, no reception, no Aiwass, no Book of the Law, no lost manuscript and no Thelema. All were fantasies conjured from the mind of an obsessive psychopath, in furtherance of his grand delusion of ‘I, Crowley, the Chosen One.'" I would disagree with all of this, as I am certain that Kenneth Grant would have done. As I have not read the book its inappropriate for me to take Cole to task on his assertions, so if you want a well balanced critique/review that is not coloured by NOT 2's virulent hatred of anything Caliphate, check out the following:
www.lashtal.com/review-liber-al-vel-bogus/
Yes, I know its on lashtal, but that website is far from being a Caliphate mouthpiece and the review is by Mogg Morgan, a one time member of the Typhonian O.T.O. whose opinion I regard as being generally very sound.
Or anyone who simply wants to make their own mind up without the bias, either of invested Thelemite reviewers whose religious conditioning and social status might be challenged by its content, or of Stephen's nervous reactions to my posts, can simply obtain the entire book for free as a PDF as it has been available in that format for years at the author's insistence since not long after publication.
I find it a bit daft that someone who hasn't even read the book finds the need to say anything about it at all, Stephen. Why do people need you to tell them what to think if you don't even know what is being discussed? Pointing them at a half-arsed review by someone who made it through maybe two chapters at best, and that in a single read? This book takes months to study, Stephen, months of irritating study, more than Mogg put into it, and more than you want anyone else to. More than I want them to too, but for totally different reasons.
Also, I don't hate the Caliphate, but I have thorough critiques of it, based on experiences dating back to the 90s and extensive saturation in all the material since before that time. Last time I looked, Hadit was telling us to be fearless. Come on, grow a pair. Someone - anyone.
I too have enjoyed Mogg's writings, his correspondence, and esteem his point of view. I read his review of this book years ago, but he definitely did not read the book thoroughly enough to even notice the salient points. I'm happy to have that convo with him, too - I like Mogg. He's been kind and generous to me in the past.
No heavily-invested Thelemite has yet reviewed this book accurately and acknowledged, let alone proposed a resolution, to the many issues it raises. It is understandable, as it is annoying to read and mixed up in the nuts and bolts is a whole heap of irrelevant conjecture and style that distracts from the discrepancies being presented. People conditioned by the language of Crowley's work (i.e., you - that's what you are if you've bought into his mythology, as you must do to use his practices in any way, his magical language) will necessarily be resistant to change. If you're happy to just run with it for now that is fine, you need to to get stuff working. But then comes a time when the bones matter. The first stage is denial, remember, and you haven't even read the book, you're twitchily pointing people at someone else's viewpoint because you aren't qualified to have one of your own, not having read it.
I was disappointed in Mogg's review, but I cut him some slack as he probably was too rushed when he read it and probably had far more interesting and better things to spend his time on than going over all that tedious Crowley autobiography crap yet again. Additionally, he's not a scholarly type, he's a Dionysian, great for inspiration and creativity and practical applications/insights, but he's not an anal-retentive fact-collector, which is the type of mindset required to deal with this unbelievably irritating book. It's not a "flow" kind of book. And that's kind of the point too.
The facts presented in that book are not matters of conjecture. There are conjectures too, and annoyingly these are chucked in all over the place, but, there are dry facts that require airing and examination. This has not yet occurred, and Lashtal is the very last place such a conversation could ever take place for more reasons than I care to go into. So yeah - if facts matter to you, get hold of the book and follow it all up, taking at least three months to do so. You may not agree with everything stated (I certainly don't) but you will have questions, questions better than "I don't know what this book says as I haven't read it but feel the need to irrelevantly jump in and tell people to read Mogg's review that actually misses 90% of the bullet points one can take away from the process, even though I have no idea about the book or its content, and Mogg only read a couple of bits, yeah that was worth doing".
I wrote a thorough (but not exhaustive) review of it myself, but refrained from using it yet as I was hoping people could maybe make their own minds up and didn't need me to tell them what to think about something they could read for themselves. I'd hoped. This was despite the author's repeated childish demands and tantrums over several years that I publish my review (he was the first person, or one of the first, I sent it to - after having bought a hard copy when it appeared).
I look forward to informed, educated, literate, unbiased discussion of facts in this work that have nothing to do with reviews by third parties who probably didn't read more than a chapter or two, hurriedly, going on his review - really didn't want to put up with the pain the book causes, for various different reasons, and fair enough too. It takes more effort to read than it should, and Mogg doesn't seem to have made it past the first couple of chapters, going by his review. And I don't blame him. So yeah, reviews - the filter you apply before even being aware you're applying one. Great way to mislead your audience, pointing them at someone else's review for a book you have absolutely no idea about and are unable to tell when the reviewer hasn't even bothered reading the book properly either.
Stephen, your post reminds me of a Catholic nutcase pointing someone at an approved Vatican review for the "correct" thoughts to have on an Indexed publication they didn't actually bother reading, let alone understanding. A real Thelemite would encourage people to make the effort themselves, and cut their own teeth instead of jumpily pointing them at what you think is a "safe" (because incomplete) review by a "confirmed thelemite", to save them the reality, so they know what safe orthodox bullshit to believe in to save them the enlightenment that may spring from encountering cognitive dissonance between the propaganda you have clearly swallowed uncritically and are now terrified to question. You can stay there, Stephen, stay right where Mogg's lazy review ended, that's clearly all a Star in Space deserves.
I thought this entire enterprise was about embracing reality, not running away from it, even when it's as hideous as Crowley's life, and Cole's writing style, in combination.
N0t 2
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Post by stephen on Dec 10, 2018 15:31:44 GMT
My, oh my, NOT 2, given that you do not think my post was very worthwhile you expend an awful lot of words in criticism of it.
My purpose was simply to challenge your rather sweeping assertion that Crowley made Aiwass up, etc. your basis for which was Cole's book. I am very familiar with many of the very detailed discussions of the Cairo Working and analyses of the holograph facsimile of The Book of the Law from other sources than Cole's.
My post was concise, honest and to the point: I don't see why you feel the need to refer to it as a "nervous reaction", or "twitchily pointing" (I note that "twitchy" or "twitchily" seems to be one of your favourite terms of criticism), or bring in comparisons with some hypothetical "Catholic nutcase", but that is your style it seems.
Mogg's review was hardly thorough, I would agree, but it raises some highly relevant points. Yes, the best thing for people to do would be to read Cole's book. A friend who came over at the weekend says he can lend me a copy. In the meantime here's a link to another review:
www.lashtal.com/liber-l-vel-bogus-by-r-t-cole/
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Post by Gregory Peters on Dec 11, 2018 23:36:06 GMT
Back to Churton for a moment, if only to provide a brief respite, I did find some interesting bits that did not make it into other bios, presumably because of his "extra access" to Bill Breeze. Probably the best nugget that I have gone on about in the past is this one:
attributed to some unpublished diaries of AC
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