I would apologize for the silence lately, but it's been rather necessary. I've been trying to break my self of certain...obsessions. Despite the shabby attempt to be ambigious, it's probably perfectly clear what I mean. The only thing that makes me sadder then my love for humanity in general is my love for certain members of it, and this only because I seem unable to erase any selfishness and selflessness from it on my part. I want my love to simply be a fact, just as it is a fact that the moon has a definite, measureable cycle. Until my love can just exist, without the traps of the mind screwing it up, then it is not perfect. This has been the focus of much of my mental activity lately. Unfortunately, I've only had limited success, but I doubt very much if I can perfect my attitudes toward love while I still wear this flesh. This shouldn't stop me from trying, however. As I've said often, the journey is at least as important as the destination, perhaps even more so, from our point of view.
Last night was rather amusing, especially as Jen had decided to start thumbing through my notebook and found some of my notes on the Gematria of her name. Either the rather drawn out process of it fascinated her, or she thought it was silly that I should go quite so far with it.
As per the request of Nate, here are more Crowley quotes from Confessions:
"Keats, on the contrary, no matter how hard he endevours to end on a note of optimism, always leaves an impression of failure"
"But the conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed, it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach. Matter being evil, the less that we know about it the better-such was the Christian philosophy in the ages which it darkened."
"It is monstrous and mischevious for liberal thinkers to call themselves Christians; thier nominal adhesion delays the disruption of the infamous system they condone. To declare oneself a follower of Jesus is not only to insult history and reason, nut to apologize for the murders of Arius, Molinos and Cranmer, the persecutors of science, the upholders of slavery, and the suppressors of all free thought and speech."
"He walked into the room shortly after dinner, to my surprise and rage-for when I am writing a poem I would show Azrael himself to the door!"
"Even at the last moment, when he felt the thunderclouds about to break over his head, he made a last desperate coup to persuade the world he was an artist by marrying a model. The device deceived nobody."
"It saddens me more than I can say to think of that young life which opened with such brilliant promise, gradually sinking into the slough of respectability."
"I took his determination to become an artist as evidence of some trace of capacity and I still hope that his years of unremitting devotion to a hopeless ambition will earn him the right to reincarnate with some sort of soul."
"The combination was ideal. Eckenstein had all the civilized qualities, and I all the savage ones"
"I have many other savage faculties; in particular, I can smell snow and water, though for ordinary thingsmy olfactory sense is far below the average. I cannot distinguish perfectly familiar perfumes in many cases; that is, I cannot connect them with thier names"
"My muscles were in quantity and quality like those of an early Victorian young lady."
"Eckensteiin recognized from the first the value of my natural instincts for mountaineering, and also that I was one of the silliest young asses alive."
"But it would have been a very dull person indeed who failed to recognize the black, bilious rage that shook him to the soul. I instance this as proof that Yeats was a genuine poet at heart, for a mere charlatan would have known that he had no cause to fear an authentic poet. What hurt him was the knowledge of his on incomparable inferiority."
"Nothing gives such a mean idea of the intelligence of mankind than that it should ever have accepted for a moment the inbecile illusion of "free-will"; for there can be very few men indeed, in any generation, who have at any time in thier lives the sufficient liberty of action to induce them to dally with it."
"The events of my life up to that point, if they had been intelligently interpreted, would have afforded ample indications of the future. I was white-hot on three points; climbing, poetry, and Magick."
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That's enough quoting for now. While I don't agree with all of Crowley's views on Christians, I put them in here to give you some insight into his hatred of the religion, which is almost justfied due to his childhood. Also it should give you a little insight into my sense of humor that I chose those particular quotes.
I am of the opinion that every person should have the liberty to pursue whatever religious path, or lack thereof, that they deem right for them. I have always said that Christianity would be ok, if more people paid more attention to what Jeheshuva (Jesus to you normal people) said, and less to what was said about him. I would like to take this a step further in saying that one must also remember that everything you have ever read in the "Bible" about this man and what he said was written seventy years after the "crusifiction heard 'round the world", as it were, and all of it was written in blatent defiance of documents that were already existant by those around him, that were actually written during his lifetime, or very shortly thereafter. The world has been decieved by a church with a political agenda, who were trying very hard to give themselves the appearance of containing the only means of religion, and every other Christian "church" has attempted to follow suit. One must remember that a great many of the "martyrs" of the religion, were martyred because they were in opposition of the Catholic agenda. Also the first "heretics" (according to the Catholic records) were in fact, Christians themselves, just having a different view of the religion then the "Church", which was undesireable to them. Despite the pathetic attempt to wipe out any of the actual wisdom of Chrisrianity, they could hide everything, mostly because they didn't know how to look for it all. This is also one of the reasons that there are so many inconsistancies with thier holy book of choice.
In spite of all this I think that Christianity is an ok religion in itself, as long as the bigotry set forth in the text is ignored completely. By bigotry, I am not mearly talking about religious, but bigotry against homosexuals as well. One could be a "Christian" and look at it this way; while it may be written in there that "a man laying with another man is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord", it is never directly quoted from either the lips of YHVH( the name of God, often misrepresented as Jehovah, or Yahweh), one of his angels, or Jehehshuva. Since none of the above literally said it, perhaps it is simply the opinion of one of the authors of the book (of which there are various), and has only been allowed to remain (like so many things) because it proves that all material things are fallable. There is only one "perfect" thing, and that is That Which Is the Source of All. Call it whatever name you like, I prefer not to when I can help it, even a name is a limitation, and the only thing that could have created everything can have no such things, if that makes any sense whatsoever.
I believe that no religion is potentially better or more correct then any other, even my own. There are, no doubt, probably some of my fellow Thelemites out there who would think this blasphemous, but that's ok. In my version of the Law, there are as many paths to Wisdom as there are people, this is one of my interpretations of "Do what thou Wilt". Some people are simply suited for Christianity, not nearly as many as claim to be Christian, but some nonetheless.
Enough of the ranting for now!
~Matt Magus
