ALEISTER CROWLEY :
Nationalism and Apologism in Popular Thelema
-Kareem Abdul Haqq
Moorish Orthodox Masjid
"I could write on love for hours; but will conclude with only one other bit of advice- Don't marry a nigger"
“We conquered the peninsula by sheer moral superiority. Our unity, our self-respect, our courage, honesty and sense of justice awakened the wonder, commanded the admiration and enforced the obedience of those who either lacked those qualities altogether, possessed some of them and felt the lack of the others, or had, actually or traditionally, sufficient of them to make them the criteria of right and ability to govern.”
Recently the blog Thelemic Union, usually a pillar of non sectarian Thelema and Thelema related posts , hosted an article that tried to convince the reader that:
Thelemic Union also recently hosted a series of essays shedding light on real issues within that community, including rape and cover ups within OTO UKGL and the rise of alt-right Thelema. They were a beacon of light within the dark world of fascist and sexist Crowleyanity.
Parallel to this for the past year and a half, USGL opened up a National Diversity Advisory Panel to people of colour who were either members of OTO or ex-members of OTO. As an ex member of OTO known for pushing back against tyranny and abuse within UKGL, I was headhunted by the USGL Advisory Panel to participate in these difficult conversations, within a community that is made up largely white, middle class men.
The USGL DAP was a beautiful thing. A group full of non-white Thelemites (or in my case ex Thelemite) all finally being able to tell their stories in a safe space where it would be impossible to accuse us of “pulling the race card”. The main commonality that almost all of us shared (save for the one Guntherian/Wasserman zombie) was that we all had accepted without any reservation or sugar coating, one single Truth, that white Thelemites seem to brush aside and not fully acknowledge:
“Are we going to repeat the insanity? Should we not rather breed humanity for quality by killing off any tainted stock, as we do with other cattle? And exterminating the vermin which infect it, especially Jews and Protestant Christians?”
ALEISTER CROWLEY WAS A RACIST AND A NATIONALIST:
Sabazius also acknowledged this publicly to his credit, yet even so, thelemites still parrot the old school apologist stance. The USGL statement made on this subject was the direct result of pressure from the DAP and should have been a signal to thelemites, that to deny those racist, fascist and sexist things we all know he wrote, is not conducive to honest and frank dialogue.
Generally in the DAP we all agreed that most white Thelemites would, at best, acknowledge that he was only a product of his time when it came to his bigoted words. That, yes, he was flawed, but definitely not a racist. Excuse after excuse. They will point to other parts of his writings that (in their minds) “cancel out” his racism. This is an extremely childish way to avoid confronting the Truth. Take the example of somebody like Piers Morgan: he is a conservative who has racial, phobic, nationalist and bigoted views, yet on occasion he gets things right. “Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day”. Just because Morgan occasionally says something I agree with, it does not cancel out or nullify any of the other things he has said. In fact, I don't care about the good things he says because he has already shown me who he is. Point being, of course he was capable of of praising and saying nice things about people of colour, but that is always lined with a disgusting superior worldview.
It is disappointing that Thelemic Union hosted this essay. One of the original co-founders of Thelemic Union, was also disappointed and confused as to why this was happening. Essentially the line was: we don’t necessarily support what we host; if it is well written we will host it . This was then followed by ad hominem attack saying any critics can’t write properly and reduced my valid criticisms to “snipes”. Outstanding. So just to repeat: when somebody voices concern that a “left of center” Thelemic blog is doing a disservice by hosting apologist material, it is called a “snipe” by said blog. I also take issue with the reasoning: if it is well written we will host it. This simply is moving the goalposts. Thelemic Union would not have hosted an apologist rape essay ,that would be absurd considering the sterling work they have done so far in terms of #me too. So what then of #BLM? Don’t they care about that movement as much as #metoo? If they had their eyes open they would have turned it down. The message is clear as day: pseudo academic discourse is more important than making a stand on #BLM.
The essay itself is nothing new and although it is not written badly, it just rehashes the same tired excuses for Crowley being a racist, while at the same time insisting that critics know nothing about Crowley. Allow me to burst that bubble: I was in OTO for over a decade: local body officer, chartered initiator, KEW and EGC Priest. I was in AA since the early 2000’s. I know my shit, to put it crudely. I am not somebody on the outside looking in and taking snipes, even though I do not consider myself a Thelemite or practice thelemic ritual *any more*, I certainly speak from a position of knowledge and experience. The essay doesn't command a direct response to most of its claims. Any intelligent person who reads what follows below will make up their own minds and come to the only valid conclusion.
There is one part of the essay that I will highlight: this is where the author starts to use the Miriam Webster definition of racism. This is the most telling part of the essay and illustrates the position of its author. To paraphrase a Sister:
“First, I immediately side-eye anyone using MW to narrowly define racism, and I encourage anyone reading to educate themselves on how racism MANIFESTS. Never mind the surface message regarding black people being racist.”
“Yes men” aside, there is an attempt within the tone of the essay to mock people who believe that AC was a racist and nationalist. This is typical of thelemites deeply involved with OTO/AA and when seen from outside the thelemic bubble of self congratulatory glad hands, essay’s like this actually read like it is written by a biased cult member. Because that is exactly what it is. If you honestly believe that all of Crowley’s contemporaries used the same language he did and harboured the same views, I am afraid you really need to educate yourself as it is simply not true. The only people who spoke in the same way were people who were racists. Do some research and you will find that in Crowley's time, many people were already advocating against white supremacy.
The following was compiled from numerous online sources, including articles and forum discussions, as well as my personal library. All this to say: yes there is some value in Crowley, his works and legacy. But Thelemites need to stand on their Truth or Square and face his problematic tendencies face on. It is the only way to move on without any bitterness or surplus. This is so important right now. The fascist alt right have a vocal faction within Thelema and also within its largest institutions. They claim a stake in Thelema by proxy of the language Crowley uses when he writes about politics, race and nationalism. This has almost nothing to do with Thelema. It has everything to do with Crowley. The fascists see themselves as Real Thelema and will point to Crowley's own words to back up their ideology and as you will see below, he does them proud. This means increasingly Islamaphobic and far right nationalist rhetoric as this faction co-opts Fox News with Thelema by way of Crowley's politics, even framing the US as a New Jerusalem, flirting closely with dominionism, another bedfellow of the far right.
The reality is that these very real threats have even affected the publishing of this essay: originally to be hosted on the EGU site, due to fear of safety from the leaders of EGU and fearing the consequences of publishing an essay like this, the EGU informed me that, regrettably, they would not be hosting it, effectively submitting to the perceived threats of the Alt Right. This is very disappointing obviously and speaks volumes as to how reserved even supporters are when dealing with publicly outing Crowley’s blatant nationalism. Ultimately fear has won over truth in this instance, privilege reigns over upset and nothing really ever changes.
Thelemic Dominionism in its original manifestation, as described in Liber CXCIV, was based on a theocratic dictatorship, which by nature rejects democracy. The government within the dominion resembles that of the British Parliament and its relationship with the Church, Lords Spiritual and Monarchy (albeit with no opposition parties). Crudely speaking God is replaced with Satan. Democracy is replaced with authoritarianism. The new American Thelemic Dominionism is a fantastical neo crusade, played against a backdrop of the New Jerusalem, pitting proud neo Templar incels and Donald Trump against imaginary Assassins, hijabi terror and invading “armies” (caravans). Fox News Thelema is Real.
I implore all those who call themselves Thelemites to confront the ideas of nationalism inherent within Crowley's writings, even so much as we have done in confronting his sexism and misogyny. This is the most direct way of challenging Real Thelema. All the while you agree that Crowley wasn't a racist, you are enabling and empowering that faction.
Crowley on the True Will of Each Race:
Race is a component of True Will:
Similarly, just as there are certain groups of stars, there are groups of human beings which, while preserving the individual integrity of each unit, have a certain common direction.
It is thus legitimate to calculate the destiny of a race, as the astronomer calculates the course of a galaxy.
It is the first business of every individual to discover what his true Will is, and then to occupy himself to doing that and nothing else. But he must also reckon with the drift of his race and of humanity as a whole.
. . . The task of every man is to express himself fully, but he must take into consideration his relationship with the community, since it is a part of his true Will to be a member thereof; and any act of his which conflicts with the true Will of the community, conflicts to that extent with his own true Will. (The Jewish Problem Re-Stated, first published in The English Review 35, July 1922)
The mainstream media and popular culture persuade us to ignore the concept of a racial True Will:
Instead of each person and each race doing its own will, the whole of humanity is being thrown into a melting-pot; the only ambition is to get to the top. . . . But instead of each soul seeking the satisfaction proper to itself, it is persuaded by the popular Press, by the pressure of public opinion, and by the contagious delusion of Democracy, that nothing is worth having save wealth in its grossest interpretation, “modern conveniences” in the crudest sense of the term, and social success in its silliest and shallowest shape. (The Jewish Problem Re-Stated)
Race/ethnicity has something to do with our Original Nature:
Let Him beware of abstinence from Action. For the curse of His grade is that He must speak Truth, that the Falsehood thereof may enslave the souls of men. Let Him then utter that without Fear, that the Law may be fulfilled. And according to His Original Nature will that law be shapen, so that one may declare gentleness and quietness, being an Hindu; and another fierceness and servility, being a Jew; and yet another ardour and manliness, being an Arab. Yet this matter toucheth the Mystery of Incarnation, and is not here to be declared. (Liber B vel Magi, 14)
Crowley on the Failures of Diversity:
Diversity can be problematic:
Just as most human beings contract unsuitable marriages, or experiment with unconsecrated unions, rather than suffer the physiological agony of abstention; just as the only secure social system rests on a basis of sexually satisfied individuals; so countries inhabited by heterogeneous races invite civil collision if the inherited instincts of any race are starved or suppressed. (The Jewish Problem Re-Stated)
Assimilation = self-mutilation, monsters, etc.:
Such action will induce a complementary current in every other racial and religious section of humanity. The Chinaman who has given up politeness, filial reverence, and philosophy for European ideas; the Russian who has bartered mystic melancholy for Marxism; the Mohammedan who has been taught to despise the faith, virtue, virility, and valour of his forebears, and to appreciate cocktails, cocottes, pork, and profanity; all these are hybrids, all these are self-mutilated cowards, garbage of self-surrender. They are monsters bred of the shame of being different to other people. The modern Italian has discarded the noble and beautiful toga for shoddy city clothes. The Mongol’s sweeping silken robes are gone; dignified in them, he prefers to look ridiculous in the frock-coat and stove-pipe hat of a Bermondsey bank clerk. The Hindoo, once clean and comfortable in cotton cloths, sweats and stinks in starched shirts and shabby suits in the hope of looking like a Sahib. Mongrels and monsters, all these! Diverse as they are, they are born of one mother, Conventionality, by one father, Shame. (The Jewish Problem Re-Stated)
Crowley says not to misinterpret what he means by all men being brothers:
I knew, as I know that two and two make four, that it is only necessary to behave like a gentleman in order to calm the apprehensions of the aborigines and to appeal to the fundamental fact that all men are brothers. By this I do not mean anything stupid, sodden and sentimental; I mean that all men equally require food, clothing and shelter, in the first place; and in the second, security from aggression in respect of life and property. (Confessions, chapter 54)
Drugs affect different races differently:
Similarly, hashish, which excites certain types of Arab, Indian, Malay or Mexican to indiscriminate murder, whose motive is often religious insanity, has no such effect on quietly disposed, refined and philosophical people, especially if they happen to possess the faculty of self-analysis. (Confessions, chapter 56)
Crowley on Racial Pride Being Good:
Pride of race is a good thing:
The Jew in Morocco is, on the whole, a very fine fellow. He has a religion and a point of honour, to say nothing of his pride of race. (Confessions, chapter 61)
National pride, and preservation, are good too:
The pride of the Spanish character is the most valuable factor in its preservation. Spain, almost alone of European countries, does not exude a horde of emigrants upon America. The pride of the individual is personal, family and local as well as national. (Confessions, chapter 63)
Crowley on the European (British) Superiority over the Indians:
The Brits are morally superior:
We conquered the peninsula by sheer moral superiority. Our unity, our self-respect, our courage, honesty and sense of justice awakened the wonder, commanded the admiration and enforced the obedience of those who either lacked those qualities altogether, possessed some of them and felt the lack of the others, or had, actually or traditionally, sufficient of them to make them the criteria of right and ability to govern. As elsewhere observed, our modern acquiescence in the rationally irrefutable argument that the colour of a man’s skin does not prevent him from being competent in any given respect, has knocked the foundations from underneath the structure of our authority. (Confessions, chapter 34)
Brits are morally superior, part II, and how we should’ve reacted differently when the Indians started sleeping with white women:
At the same time, the example of India should have been enough. British prestige in India rested on the real moral superiority of courage, truthfulness, justice and self-control. It has been destroyed by the attempt to replace this irrational lever of iron by the rotten laths of reason. We should never have shown our weakness to the Indian student who fills Bengal with the tale of his sexual conquest of white women, our servant girls who took these sons of pettifoggers for princes. (Confessions, chapter 54)
Crowley on Ethnic Nationalism as ‘Charming’ and ‘Harmless’:
AC on the creation of a new European empire:
He called himself Ludovic Cameron, being a passionate Jacobite and having a Cameron somewhere in his family tree. He was very keen on the Celtic revival and wanted to unite the five Celtic nations in an empire. In this political project he had not wholly succeeded: but he had got as far as designing a flag. And, oh so ugly! All this seemed childish to me, but no more so than imperialism, and it had the advantage of being rather charming and entirely harmless. (Confessions, chapter 45)
Crowley on Jews:
As parasites:
Christians and other troglodytes — but most especially the parasites of man, the Jews (The New Comment on Liber AL, III:11)
A barbarous race:
Another line or argument is the historical. We do not here refer to the alleged forgery of the Qabalah by Rabbi Moses ben Leon—was it not?—but to the general position of the ethnologist that the Jews were an entirely barbarous race, incapable of any spiritual pursuit. (preface to 777, printed in The Equinox, Vol. 1, No. 8)
AC says, why look for spiritual knowledge among people who still practice human sacrifice?
Human sacrifices are to-day still practised by the Jews of Eastern Europe, as is set forth at length by the late Sir Richard Burton in the MS. which the wealthy Jews of England have compassed heaven and earth to suppress, and evidenced by the ever-recurring Pogroms against which so senseless and outcry is made by those who live among those degenerate Jews who are at least not cannibals.
Is it to such people, indeed, that we are to look for the highest and subtlest spiritual knowledge? (preface to 777, printed in The Equinox, Vol. 1, No. 8)
Talking about knighthood being awarded to movie stars and comedians:
There is only one honour connected with true knighthood, that of being a man of honour, of having taken the vows — to uphold the right, to serve mankind, to protect the distressed, and generally to exercise the manly virtues. When renegade Jews and clowns walk in to dinner before gentlemen, the latter may prefer to go without. (Confessions, chapter 14)
AC says the negative stereotypes are true:
A similar case is presented by the Jew, who really does only too often possess the bad qualities for which he is disliked; but they are not proper to his race. No people can show finer specimens of humanity. The Hebrew poets and prophets are sublime. The Jewish soldier is courageous, the Jewish rich man generous. The race possesses imagination, romance, loyalty, probity and humanity in an exceptional degree. But the Jew has been persecuted so relentlessly that his survival has depended on the development of his worst qualities; avarice, servility, falseness, cunning and the rest. (Confessions, chapter 54)
American Masonry was changed so Jews could participate:
The Scottish Rite, the degrees of Knight Templar, Knight of Malta and others in England are definitely Christian, e.g. the point of one degree is the identification of prophet, priest and king, three in one, the Trinity of the Royal Arch, with Christ; and in the Rose Croix degree, Christ is recognized as the “corner stone” of earlier symbolism. But in America, the Christian elements have been removed so that wealthy Jews may reach the summit of masonry. (Confessions, chapter 72)
More anti-Semitism:
It has been said that every nation has the government which it deserves. I would add, the type of Jew which it deserves. (Confessions, chapter 61)
In discussing America:
There is, moreover, an established contingent of Africans, a new infiltration of Asiatics, of whom the Jews are a critically important factor in the social and economic problems of the day . . . (Confessions, chapter 75)
The “bad type of Jew”:
One must further remark that each sign governs two main types — the active and the passive. Thus Aries: the high brows, long face, aquiline nose, tall thin muscular figure, shows the fiery and martial qualities of the sign. But there is an evil and averse counterpart corresponding to the ovine nature. We have the gross, hooked, pendulous proboscis; the thick, flabby, moist lips; the patient stupid eyes, and timid, hunted gait of the bad type of Jew. (Confessions, chapter 77)
The antagonism is irreconcilable:
The Jews are charged with many crimes, from ritual murder and usury to lack of patriotism. But all these charges are merely diverse expressions of the feeling that there is an irreconcilable antagonism. (The Jewish Problem Re-Stated)
AC says everything is the Jews’ fault:
Israel has corrupted the world, whether by conquest, by conversion, or by conspiracy. The Jew has eaten his way into everything. The caricature of Semitic thought, Christianity, rotted Roman virtue through introducing the moral subterfuge of vicarious atonement. (The Jewish Problem Re-Stated)
It’s all the Jews’ fault, part II:
Jewish commercial cleverness has created cosmopolitanism. Jewish sympathy with suffering has made the cliffs of caste to crumble. Jewish ethical exclusiveness has created a tyranny of conventional formalities to replace the righteousness of self-respect. The Jew, living so long on sufferance, by subterfuge, servility, and self-effacement, has taught his tricks to the whole world. (The Jewish Problem Re-Stated)
On the dirty mind of the Eastern Jew:
We find Christ insisting on this absolute chastity of body and mind, in a similar manner, and for similar reasons; for the Eastern Jew if he is not actually doing something dirty, is sure to be thinking about it. (The Temple of Solomon the King, footnote, published in The Equinox, Vol. 1, No. 4)
More on Jews as parasites:
The Ritual of the Adoration of Ra-Hoor-Khuit is, as one might expect, illustrative of His nature. It seems doubtful whether this Ritual can ever be of the type of symbolic celebration; it appears rather as if expeditions against the Heathen: i.e. Christians and other troglodytes – but most especially the parasites of man, the Jews – were to be His rite. (The New Comment on Liber AL, III:11)
AC asks, shouldn’t we just exterminate the Jews (and Protestants):
Are we going to repeat the insanity? Should we not rather breed humanity for quality by killing off any tainted stock, as we do with other cattle? And exterminating the vermin which infect it, especially Jews and Protestant Christians? (The New Comment on Liber AL, III:18)
Crowley on Mexicans:
AC on dead Mexicans:
Neither the coyotes nor the turkey-buzzards will touch a dead Mexican. His flesh has been too thoroughly impregnated with chillies and other pungent condiments. (Confessions, chapter 23)
Crowley tried making a joke about it to Allan Bennett, who apparently just ignored him:
At any moment he could stop the leech, though already fastened to his wrist, by this breathing trick. We would put our hands together into the water; his would come out free, mine with a dozen leeches on it. At such moments I would bitterly remark that a coyote will not eat a dead Mexican; but it failed to annoy him. (Confessions, chapter 29)
Crowley on the Chinese:
The white man is morally superior:
The Chinese does not respect the white man as the Indian does — for his possession of high moral qualities. The very coolies despise their wealthiest merchants for their honesty, which, by the way, is unique in commerce. They respect any man who acts as their own mandarins act; with absolute lack of sympathy, justice or any other human feelings. They treat the traveler well in proportion as he is overbearing, haughty and avaricious.
I found, in fact, that it was necessary to throw the whole of my previous principles overboard. One cannot fraternize with the Chinese of the lower classes; one must treat them with absolute contempt and callousness. (Confessions, chapter 55)
Crowley on Blacks:
Only the “lowest type” convert to Christianity:
Where Islam and Christianity meet in open competition, as in some parts of Africa, it is found that only the lowest type of Negro, such as is accustomed to arrange matters with conscience by hanging a rag on a piece of stick, accepts Christianity. (Confessions, chapter 36)
AC on Krishnamurti:
The Black School has always worked insidiously, by treachery. We need then not be surprised by finding that its most notable representative was the renegade follower of Blavatsky, Annie Besant, and that she was charged by her Black masters with the mission of persuading the world to accept for its Teacher a negroid Messiah. To make the humiliation more complete, a wretched creature was chosen who, to the most loathsome moral qualities, added the most fatuous imbecility. And then blew up! (Magick Without Tears, ch VIII)
Using the n-word and exerting his authority over the island negroes:
The circumference of the island is somewhat over fifteen miles, and the first discovery I made was that of a broken-down sailing-boat, which the n*ggers had never dared approach since the wreck that brought it there. In the cabins I found gunpowder in large quantities, rum, matches, and tobacco; I had all this carried to my oasis, together with a cannon; and when the negroes had heard the voice of this powerful engine my authority was established on the most solid basis. ( published in The Equinox, Vol. 1, No. 2)
The colonialist:
I had undertaken the difficult task of civilising the negroes . . . ( published in The Equinox, Vol. 1, No. 2)
A character in a play:
The servant of Hermes, a negro uglier than an ape. (Adonis, published in The Equinox, Vol. 1, No. 7)
More on the type of black that converts to Christianity:
This is why missionaries, in all these centuries, have produced no conversions whatever, save among the lowest types of negro, who resemble the Anglo-Saxon in this possession of the ‘fear-of-God’ and ‘Sin’ psychopathies. (The New Comment on Liber AL, II:22)
Crowley on Indians:
The n-word again:
The doctor was a Bengali named Ram Lal Sircar, a burly n*gger of the most loathsome type. I am not fond of Benaglis at the best and he as the worst specimen of his race I have ever seen. He was fat and oily, with small piglike treacherous eyes. On the rare occasions when he was not eating, he was writing anti-British articles for the Bengal native press. (Confessions, chapter 55)
On a certain caste of Hindu:
it is only the lowest caste of Hindu which really convinces itself that sacrifices and servility suffice for salvation. (Confessions, chapter 36)
In discussing Colombo (Sri Lanka):
its natives are nasty, the men with long hair cooped up by a comb, smelling of fish, the women with waists bulging black between coat and skirt, greasy with coconut oil, and both chewing betel and spitting it out till their teeth ooze with red and the streets look like shambles; its English are exhausted and enervated. The Eurasians are anaemic abortions; the burghers — Dutch halfcasts — stolid squareheads; the Portuguese piebalds sly sneaks, vicious, venal, vermiform villains. The Tamils are black but not comely. The riff-raff of rascality endemic in all ports is here exceptionally repulsive. . . .
In the matter of religion, the Hindus are (as everywhere else) servile, shallow, cowardly and hypocritical; though being mostly Shaivites, adoring frankly the power of Procreation and Destruction, they are less loathsome than Vishnavites, who cringe before a fetish who promises them Preservation and (as Krishna) claims to be the Original of which Christ is a copy. (Confessions, chapter 27)
On his time in Moharbhanj:
For the first time I liked Hindus. . . . This gentleman, whose name was Martin, had taken a high degree at Oxford, and had studied science and engineering very thoroughly. No one could have suspected that he had a Bengali grandmother. But in the first twenty-four hours I had discovered the truth of the aphorism “Blood will tell”. For all his European education, he believed in the most primitive superstitions, from ghosts and witches to mysterious medicines. (Confessions, chapter 53)
On India:
India has not progressed in the last thousand years and will not in the next thousand. (Confessions, chapter 46)
On how to deal with hired ekka drivers and other natives:
But the moment we were visible I jumped down, fixed my left hand in his beard (itself a blood insult), dragged him from his ekka and lammed into him with my belt in view of the whole camp — apparently without any provocation.
. . . The result was that I never had the slightest difficulties with natives in India ever afterwards and was able to practise perfect tolerance of genuine accidents. I had forced them to respect us, which, with an Indian, is the first step to acquiring his love. And the men soon showed themselves willing to risk their lives, as they ignorantly thought they were being asked to do, in order to please us. Younghusband’s expedition of Yarkand cost seventeen coolies their lives, and our men were convinced that the object of our expedition was to make a new pass to that city. Nothing I could say would persuade them otherwise. . . .
. . . The first business of any traveller in any part of the world is to establish his moral superiority. He has to be uniformly calm, cheerful, just, perspicacious, indulgent and inexorable. He must decline to be swindled out of the fraction of a farthing. If he once gives way, he is done for. (Confessions, chapter 34)
On why the Asiatics seem so peaceful:
The Buddha (it is true) did not encourage bloodshed, in spite of his having died from an overfeed of pork, but as Mr. A. Crowley has said, many of his present-day followers are quite capable of killing their own brothers for five rupees. The Western theory that Buddhists are lambs and models of virtue is due to the fact that certain Western vices are not so congenial to the Asiatic as they are to the European; and not because Buddhists are incapable of enjoying themselves. (The Temple of Solomon the King, footnote, published in The Equinox Vol. 1, No. 4).
Crowley on People of Mixed Race:
Why mixed-raced European-Asians are annoying (not entirely their fault):
I am not a snob or a puritan, but Eurasians do get on my nerves. I do not believe that their universally admitted baseness is due to a mixture of blood or the presumable peculiarity of their parents; but that they are forced into vileness by the attitude of both their white and coloured neighbours. . . . Even the highest-class Eurasians such as Ananda Koomaraswamy suffer acutely from the shame of being considered outcast. The irrationality and injustice of their neighbours heightens the feeling and it breeds the very abominations which the snobbish inhumanity of their fellow-men expects of them. (Confessions, chapter 54)
Egyptians suffer from too much mixed blood:
I liked them very much better than the Egyptians, who seem to me to suffer from too much history, too much civilization, too much commerce, too much admixture of blood . . . (Confessions, chapter 61)
Crowley on Fascism:
The “common-sense” program of Fascism:
For sometime I had interested myself in Fascismo which I regarded with entire sympathy even excluding its illegitimacy on the ground that constitutional authority had become to all intents and purposes a dead letter. I was delighted with the common sense of its programme and was especially pleased by its attitude towards the Church. . . . I was also convinced of the importance of the movement and of its almost immediate success. I did my utmost to persuade Austin Harrison of the soundness of my judgment. (Confessions, chapter 95)
Mussolini’s “delightful” Fascists:
The Fascisti patrolling the railway were delightful. They had all the picturesqueness of opera brigands. They were armed with a most miscellaneous assortment of weapons. (Confessions, chapter 95)
The Fascists’ behavior was “admirable”:
I was consequently amazed to hear of the coup d’état. Rome was wild with enthusiasm. The Fascisti swarmed all over the city. I thought their behaviour admirable. They policed the towns and suppressed any attempted breach of the peace with the utmost efficiency; but for all that my first doubts disturbed my pleasure in the victory. I thought Mussolini was acting rashly in overthrowing the constitutions. Not only was a reaction certain to follow, as always when success is not the final flowering of regular growth, but I foresaw that Mussolini would be obliged to play politics just as fatally as his predecessors in order to survive the first few crises of his government. My apprehension has proved only too true. Almost at once, he had to sell his soul to the Vatican in whom a real statesman would have recognized his most dangerous foe. (Confessions, chapter 95)
The only thing that changed Crowley’s mind about Italian Fascism was Mussolini’s alliance with the Church:
During the winter I heard nothing from the outer world, but when I went to Naples in April I found that my worst anticipations had been exceeded. The price of power had proved exorbitant. Mussolini was bankrupt. He had been compelled to purchase papal support . . . I began immediately to write epigrams against Mussolini . . . (Confessions, chapter 95)
Crowley on the American Civil War
It was about secession, not slavery:
What was the Civil War but a murderous struggle against secession? (Confessions, chapter 75)
‘The Black Messiah’
Note: We DO NOT accept HB’s recent line that this was not written by Crowley. It is a cynical revision designed to shut down any criticism of Crowley being a white supremacist. There is no proof of what HB has said in defense. It is, at best his opinion, not backed up by any evidence.
AC on the menace of “inferior races”:
There is one salient fact of to-day to which Europe and America can not shut their eyes. It is the surreptitious agitation of the inferior races, those whom evolution left behind – the negro and negroid types period. This menace grows with every year.
Indian immigration to France as a serious a threat:
When Punjabi Sipahis talk among themselves of France, they . . . boast that when the time is ripe they will go over and take possession of those fertile plains, and live in that delightful climate. I will not make the reader’s blood boil with indignation by hinting at the fouler designs implied. This is only one crude illustration of a gigantic movement which is actually in progress – a far more serious menace than the old terror of the ‘Yellow Peril’.
Europeans as superior:
The campaigning against the supremacy of the higher races is therefore carried on, at the present time, by subtly undermining the spiritual bastions of Europe and America.
The Theosophists felt confident in proclaiming Krishnamurti the world teacher because they thought the white races had lost their courage and nobility:
They would hardly dare to attempt to put over so blatant and obscene a fraud; if they had not good reason for doubting whether there remained at the bottom of the hearts of the white civilised races, their ancient courage and inherited nobility.
The lowest Europeans are seduced by the “inferior races”:
The appeal of the inferior races is, perhaps, a taint of atavism in our blood. Those weary spirits among us who despair of life, who fear to fall from the long ladder of evolution; are always ready to listen to the siren calls of the bestial. From the sentimental Yogi to the jazz band, the soft luxurious mire attracts those degenerate types who have forgotten their manhood and their womanhood.
The white race must defend itself, “and reconquer our foregone prestige and mastery”:
The grotesque the atricalities of the renegade Annie Besant, the Barnum of the buck Messiah Krishnamurti, must serve to sharpen the will of the white race; not only to defend itself; but to sally forth once more as in the spacious days of Good Queen Bess, and reconquer our foregone prestige and mastery.
Which way, white men and women?
White men and women must choose between these alternatives: Will they yield, content to be the black man’s slave, after having been his master? or will they stand to, and reply by an energetic spiritual reaction, which will restore the threatened equilibrium of the races?
AC claims to be the “champion” of the white race:
The white champion has appeared, He who, under the aegis of the Spiritual Masters of the planet, has proclaimed the Law of Thelema, the Law of Love, comprehended and directed by Will: the Law which bids each man pursue the proper orbit of his destiny, and develop himself around his own true centre of Light, will bring back welfare to his own race, and establish Peace with Victory upon the Earth.”
I believe the above quotes show and prove without any doubt that Crowley was a Nationalist with overt racial tendencies. His comments on Italian fascism should make anybody shudder, and it is these quotes which give huge weight to alt-right Thelemite ideology. Any other conclusion requires skilled mental gymnastics and the bubble of a cult mentality to maintain. When Sabazius himself makes a public statement, essentially saying what I have made a case for here, and Thelemites don’t take heed because they don’t like the idea of their beloved Prophet being a racist, that shows and proves they don’t care about truth or social or restorative justice, only the that the edifice is maintained. I understand the will to do so. Most people of my generation were introduced to Crowley through Wilson and Leary. Wilson paints a quaint, cool, exciting, hippy picture of Crowley, even coining the loathsome and enabling nickname “Uncle Al”. This made Crowley absolutely appealing to many, including me. Wilson was not, it turned out, at all qualified to speak on Crowley in any serious or academic way, and in this sense Wilson too failed us by painting an oversimplified psychedelic version of Crowley. We are all older now. We all should know better. As a POC who in my past as a Thelemite defended Crowley against accusations of racism, I saw my old slave-self in the essay. It is not easy to see from the inside, but I am not alone in seeing clearly now and seeing apologists for what they are: lost and doing time in a cult of personality. Perhaps it is time to finally let go of one of the most old aeonic relics from Thelema: Crowley himself.