Quotes from Aleister Crowley

All this talk about 'suffering humanity' is principally drivel based on the error of transferring one's own psychology to one's neighbour. The Golden Rule is silly. If Lord Alfred Douglas (for example) did to others what he would like them to do to him, many would resent his action.

Bind nothing! Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt

But to understand English is one thing; to understand an Englishman who talks is another.

She it is, she, that found me In the morphia honeymoon; With silk and steel she bound me In her poisonous milk she drowned me, Even now her arms surround me

Practise a thousand times, and it becomes difficult; a thousand thousand, and it becomes easy; a thousand thousand times a thousand thousand, and it is no longer Thou that doeth it, but It that doeth itself through thee.

Beauty is itself so unattainable that it escapes altogether; and the true artist, like the true Mystic, can never rest

Belief is the enemy of knowledge.

Any act, if in accordance with the will, is an act of magic.

Until you've got your mouth full of cocaine, you don't know what kissing is. One kiss goes on from phase to phase like one of those novels by Balzac and Zola and Romain Rolland and D. H. Lawrence and those chaps. And you never get tire. You're on fourth speed all the time, and the engine purrs like a kitten, a big white kitten with the stars in its whiskers.

The so-called poet with his vague dreams and ideals is indeed no better than a harmless lunatic; the true poet is the worker, who grips life's throat and wrings out its secret, who selects austerely and composes concisely, whose work is as true and clean as razor-steel, albeit its sweep is vaster and swifter than the sun's!

All phenomena of which we are aware take place in our own minds, and therefore the only thing we have to look at is the mind; which is a more constant quantity over all the species of humanity than is generally supposed.

It seemed to her as if her body were altogether too heavy for her; she had the feeling so well known to opium- smokers, which they call clou'e 'a terre. It is as if the body clung desperately to the earth, by its own weight, and yet in the same way as a tired child nestles to its mother's breast. In this sensation there is a perfect lassitude mingled with a perfect longing. It may be that it is the counterpart of the freedom of the soul of which it is the herald and companion.

The two seem, at first glance, to be opposed, but when you have advanced a little in both, you find that concentration learned in Yoga is of immense use in attaining the mental powers necessary in Magick; on the other hand, the discipline of Magick is of the greatest service in Yoga.

The Universe is the looking-glass of the soul.

But neither Europe nor Africa can show any such desolation as America. The proudest, stubbornest, bitterest peasant of deserted Spain, the most primitive and superstitious Arab of the remotest oases, are a little more than kin and never less than kind at their worst; whereas in the United States one is almost always conscious of an instinctive lack of sympathy and understanding with even the most charming and cultured people.

It may interest you that, a day or so ago, attempting to discuss your ideas with regard to sex and religion , my eccentric friend, fixing his eyes rather fiercely upon me, growled abruptly: Semen is God. Unwilling to excite him further, I replied: Sir, though I understand perfectly what you mean by Semen, I am unacquainted with the connotation which you attach to the term God.

The proper formation and consecration of the Eucharist requires careful attention. The Objects of the Working must be chosen systematically. My own Record has all the faults of pioneer work: it contains much to avoid. There must be proper tabulation of the Experiments, and strictly scientific observation. Sentimentality, sexual or spiritual, must be sternly suppressed. Compliance with these conventions should assure a success far greater than I have myself attained.

El más grave de todos los ´pecados´ es el autoengaño

I thought I would stand myself a little dinner. I hadn't quite enough sense to know that what I really wanted was human companions. There aren't such things. Every man is eternally alone. But when you get mixed up with a fairly decent crowd, you forget that appalling fact for long enough to give your brain time to recover from the acute symptoms of its disease - that of thinking.

40. My adepts stand upright; their head above the heavens, their feet below the hells. 41. But since one is naturally attracted to the Angel, another to the Demon, let the first strengthen the lower link, the last attach more firmly to the higher.

It is a sort of sinister warning that there is some person or some thing in the Universe outside oneself: and the realisation of that is as frankly frightening as the other realisation, that one is eternally alone, is horrible.

Then saith the prophet and slave of the beauteous one: Who am I, and what shall be the sign? So she answered him bending down, a lambent flame of blue, all-touching, all-penetrant, her lovely hands upon the black earth, & her lithe body arched for love, and her soft feet not hurting the little flowers: Thou knowest! And the sign shall be my ecstasy, the consciousness of the continuity of existence, the omnipresence of my body.

I saw at once the way to appeal to him.. 'Well, of course you know.' I said, 'in really smart circles one has to offer heroin and cocaine to people. It's only a passing fashion, of course, but while it's on, one's really out of it if one doesn't do the right thing.

Awake from dream, the truth is known: awake from waking. The truth is: The Unknown