Quotes from Aleister Crowley

By such methods, the A?A? intends to make occult science as systematic and scientific as chemistry; to rescue it from the ill repute which, thanks both to the ignorant and dishonest quacks that have prostituted its name, and to the fanatical and narrow-minded enthusiasts that have turned it into a fetish, has made it an object of aversion to those very minds whose enthusiasm and integrity make them most in needs of its benefits, and most fit to obtain them.

Early to bed and early to rise Makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise: But late to watch and early to pray Brings him across The Abyss, they say.

The Sorcerer may be—indeed he usually is—a thwarted disappointed man whose aims are perfectly natural. Often enough, his real trouble is ignorance; and by the time he has become fairly hot stuff as a Black Magician, he has learnt that he is getting nowhere, and finds himself, despite himself, on the True Path of the Wise.

the ultimate Yoga which gives emancipation, which destroys the sense of separateness which is the root of Desire, is to be made by the concentration of every element of one's being, and annihilating it by intimate combustion with the universe itself.

Directly a man begins to say Yes without the question Why? he becomes a dogmatist, a potential, if not an actual liar.

If Osiris, Christ, and Mahomet were mad, then indeed is madness the key to the door of the Temple.

Verily, love is death, and death is life to come.

Cynicism is a great cure for over-study. There is a great deal of cynicism in this book, in one place and another. It should be regarded as Angostura Bitters, to brighten the flavour of a discourse which were else too sweet. It prevents one from slopping over into sentimentality.

O bid these strangers go ; Turn to my lips till their cup overflow ; Hurt me with kisses, kill me with desire, Consume me and destroy me with the fire Of bleeding passion straining at the heart, Touched to the core by sweetnesses that smart ; Bitten by fiery snakes, whose poisonous breath Swoons in the midnight, and dissolves to death !

O Godhead of glory and anguish! O Christ shone through Magdalen's tears! Thy sons on the universe languish In iron bands strong as the spheres; With virtue Thy likeness we cover, With priestcraft we mock at Thy power, And the meanest on earth is a lover, As vile as a flower.

When you have proved that God is merely a name for the sex instinct, it appears to me not far to the perception that the sex instinct is God." -Review of Ida Craddock's "Heavenly Bridegrooms

Love in a night shall live and die, Love in a day shall wing and fly; Love in the Spring shall last an hour, Easily fade a spring-tide flower.

Like clouds in rain, like seas Exultant as they roll, We mix in ecstasies, And, as breeze melts in breeze, Thy soul becomes my soul.

No recorded vision is perfect, of high visions, for the seer must keep either his physical organs or his memory in working order. And neither is capable. There is no bridge. One can only be conscious of one thing at a time, and as the consciousness moves nearer to the vision, it loses control of the physical and mental.

it was once necessary to proclaim the entire doctrine of Yoga in the fewest possible words.... I did so. "Sit still. Stop thinking. Shut up. Get out!" The first two of these instructions comprise the whole of the technique of Yoga. The last two are of a sublimity which it would be improper to expound in this present elementary stage.

MARSYAS:        Beware! Easily trips the big word dare. Each man's an Å'dipus, that thinks He hath the four powers of the Sphinx, Will, Courage, Knowledge, Silence. Son, Even the adepts scarce win to one! The Thoughts—they fall like rotten fruits. But to destroy the power that makes These thoughts—thy Self? A man it takes To tear his soul up by the roots! This is the mandrake fable, boy!

Thoughts are false.

22. I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight and bright glory, and stir the hearts of men with drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, & be drunk thereof! They shall not harm ye at all. It is a lie, this folly against self. The exposure of innocence is a lie. Be strong, o man! lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for this.

In brief, we govern by a mixture of lying and bullying.

Let my servants be few & secret: they shall rule the many & the known.

My three-dimensional mind thinks all this 'real,' a history; where at most it is a geography, a partial [62] set of infinite aspects.

For when all is equilibrated, when all is beheld from without all, there is joy, joy, joy that is but one facet of a diamond, every other facet whereof is more joyful than joy itself.

By doing certain things certain results will follow. Students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophical validity to any of them.

XIV. Pour thine all freely from the Vase in thy right hand, and lose no drop! Hath not thy left hand a vase? Transmute all wholly into the Image of thy Will, bringing each to its true token of Perfection! Dissolve the Pearl in the Wine-cup: drink, and make manifest the Virtue of that Pearl!