Anton LaVey slams Crowley et al.
Strange, how seldom one hears plaudits for Crowley’s poetry, worthy of inclusion with the likes of James Thompson, Baudelaire, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard. If Crowley was a magician, it was the beauty of his creative art which made him so, not his drug-befuddled callings-up of Choronzon, et al. Unfortunately, his followers today have taken up his worst, while neglecting his best.
Church of Satan: Anton LaVey: On Occultism of the Past
(via Disinfo).
February 21, 2004 at 3:25 pm
“For every page of meat it seemed there were a hundred pages of filler, adding up to a pretty, plump, but decidely ersatz hunk of baloney.”
At least this much is true of today’s “new age” movement. Chaos magick tried to clear it up, but eventually started to get bogged down in its own tradition as well.
I’ve always been one to believe that if you’re going to travel down that path, you should rely on experience more than theory… and carry a shovel for the crap along the way.
February 23, 2004 at 10:37 pm
Michael, you’re right on the money. The fact is that magic, whether or not you spell it with a k, is both more profound and more prosaic than many (most?) “practitioners” think.
We all do it, every day, in our own way. We can observe the ways of others and learn the lessons from them that seem to fit with our lives, but once blind obedience — whethr to a church, religion, or system — is simply another form of blindness and slavery.