Aleister Crowley Quotations

I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff.

Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness.

If one were to take the bible seriously one would go mad. But to take the bible seriously, one must be already mad.

Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another.

The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing.

To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all.

Paganism is wholesome because it faces the facts of life.

Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fighting drunk on bogey tales.

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.

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.

The supreme satisfaction is to be able to despise one's neighbor and this fact goes far to account for religious intolerance. It is evidently consoling to reflect that the people next door are headed for hell.

I was asked to memorise what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner.

Part of the public horror of sexual irregularity so-called is due to the fact that everyone knows himself essentially guilty.

I have never grown out of the infantile belief that the universe was made for me to suck.

Indubitably, magic is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is more opportunity for errors of comprehension, judgment and practice than in any other branch of physics.

I can imagine myself on my death-bed, spent utterly with lust to touch the next world, like a boy asking for his first kiss from a woman.

In the absence of willpower the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.

The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript.

The joy of life consists in the exercise of one's energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal.

Chinese civilisation is so systematic that wild animals have been abolished on principle.

He shall fall down into a pit called Because, and there he shall perish with the dogs of reason.

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.

A white male child of perfect innocence and intelligence makes the most suitable victim.

There is a single main definition of the object of all magical Ritual. It is the uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm. The Supreme and Complete Ritual is therefore the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; or, in the language of Mysticism, Union with God.

The absolute rule of the state shall be a function of the absolute liberty of each individual will.

All questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings, each for himself

The average man cannot believe that an artist may be as serious and highminded an observer of life as the professed man of science.

I've written this to keep from crying. But I am crying, only the tears won't come.

Their false compassion is called compassion and their false understanding is called understanding, for this is their most potent spell.

It would be unwise to condemn as irrational the practice of devouring the heart and liver of an adversary while yet warm. For the highest spiritual working one must choose that victim which contains the greatest and purest force; a male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory.

Initiation means the Journey Inwards: nothing is changed or can be changed; but all is trulier understood with every step.

In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.

To the eyes of a god, mankind must appear as a species of bacteria which multiply and become progressively virulent whenever they find themselves in a congenial culture, and whose activity diminishes until they disappear completely as soon as proper measures are taken to sterilize them.

By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.

This complaining rambling rubbish is the substitute which has taken the place of love.

Love stories are only fit for the solace of people in the insanity of puberty. No healthy adult human being can really care whether so-and-so does or does not succeed in satisfying his physiological uneasiness by the aid of some particular person or not.

Imagine listening to Beethoven with the prepossession that C is a good note and F a bad one; yet this is exactly the stand point from which all uninitiates contemplate the universe. Obviously, they miss the music.

I hardly ever talk- words seem such a waste, and they are none of them true. No one has yet invented a language from my point of view.

Love is the law, love under will.

There are hardly half a dozen writers in England today who have not sold out to the enemy. Even when their good work has been a success, Mammon grips them and whispers: More money for more work.

This formula of Love is universal; all the laws of Nature are its servitors. Thus, gravitation, chemical affinity, electrical potential, and the rest - and these are alike mere aspects of the general law - are so many differently-observed statements of the unique tendency.

Acts which are essentially dishonourable must not be done; they would be justified only by calm contemplation of their correctness in abstract cases.

To knot a sentence up properly, it has to be thought out carefully, and revised. New phrases have to be put in; sudden changes of subject must be introducted; verbs must be shifted to unsuspected localities; short words must be excised with ruthless hand; archaisms must be sprinkled like sugar-plums upon the concoction; the fatal human tendency to say things straightforwardly must be detected and defeated by adroit reversals; and, if a glimmer of meaning yet remain under close scrutiny, it must be removed by replacing all the principal verbs by paraphrases in some dead language.

I am inclined to agree with the Head Master of Eton that pæderastic passions among schoolboys 'do no harm'; further, I think them the only redeeming feature of sexual life at public schools.

Oh, how superior is the Eye of Horus to the Mouth of Isis!

For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.

Every intentional act is a magical act.

When one walks, one is brought into touch first of all with the essential relations between one's physical powers and the character of the country; one is compelled to see it as its natives do. Then every man one meets is an individual.

Man has the right . . . to play as he will . . . to think what he will: to speak what he will: to write what he will: to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will: to dress as he will.

The few love affairs which had come my way had been rather silly and sordid. They had not revealed the possibilities of love; in fact I had thought it a somewhat overrated pleasure, a brief and brutal blindness with boredom and disgust hard on its heels.

Practically, Science is true; and Faith is foolish.

There is a splendour in my name hidden and glorious, as the sun of midnight is ever the son.

Fortunately we have learnt to combine these ideas, not in the mutual toleration of sub-contraries, but in the affirmation of contraries, that transcending of the laws of intellect which is madness in the ordinary man, genius in the Overman who hath arrived to strike off more fetters from our understanding.

The first task of the Magician in every ceremony is therefore to render his Circle absolutely impregnable.

Black magic is not a myth. It is a totally unscientific and emotional form of magic, but it does get results — of an extremely temporary nature.

The more necessary anything appears to my mind, the most certain it is that I only assert a limitation.

I was in the death struggle with self: God and Satan fought for my soul those three long hours. God conquered — now I have only one doubt left — which of the twain was God?

A single ego is an absurdly narrow vantage point from which to view the world.

There is no part of me that is not of the Gods.

If you examine the highest poetry in the light of common sense, you can only say that it is rubbish; and in actual fact you cannot so examine it at all, because there is something in poetry which is not in the words themselves, which is not in the images suggested by the words 'O windy star blown sideways up the sky!' True poetry is itself a magic spell which is a key to the ineffable.

It is necessary, in this world, to be made of harder stuff than one's environment.

I cling unto the burning Æthyr like Lucifer that fell through the Abyss, and by the fury of his flight kindled the air. And I am Belial, for having seen the Rose upon thy breast, I have denied God. And I am Satan! I am Satan! I am cast out upon a burning crag! And the sea boils about the desolation thereof. And already the vultures gather, and feast upon my flesh.

She knew that she belonged to this man, body and soul. Every trace of shame departed; it was burnt out by the fire that consumed her. She gave him a thousand opportunities; she fought to turn his words to serious things. He baffled her with his shallow smile and ready tongue, that twisted all topics to triviality. By six o'clock she was morally on her knees before him; she was imploring him to stay to dinner with her. He refused.

Adaptation to one's environment makes for a sort of survival; but after all, the supreme victory is only won by those who prove themselves of so much hardier stuff than the rest that no power on earth is able to destroy them. The people who have really made history are the martyrs.

I believe in one Gnostic and Catholic Church of Light, Life, Love and Liberty, the Word of whose Law is THELEMA .

Astrology has no more useful function than this, to discover the inmost nature of a man and to bring it out into his consciousness, that he may fulfil it according to the law of light.

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.

Anything which throws light upon the Universe, anything which reveals us to ourselves, should be welcome in this world of riddles.

Do not imagine that art or anything else is other than high magic! - is a system of holy hieroglyph. The artist, the initiate, thus frames his mysteries. The rest of the world scoff, or seek to understand, or pretend to understand; some few obtain the truth.

Sanity is a compromise.

Here again, there is no tabulation; for us it is left to sacrifice literary charm, and even some accuracy, in order to bring out the one great point. The cause of human sectarianism is not lack of sympathy in thought, but in speech; and this it is our not unambitious design to remedy.

Tell the truth, but lead so improbable a life that the truth will never be believed.

In every Magical, or similar system, it is invariably the first condition which the Aspirant must fulfill: he must once and for all and for ever put his family outside his magical circle.Even the Gospels insist clearly and weightily on this.Christ himself (i.e. whoever is meant by this name in this passage) callously disowns his mother and his brethren (Luke VIII, 19). And he repeatedly makes discipleship contingent on the total renunciation of all family ties. He would not even allow a man to attend his father's funeral!Is the magical tradition less rigid?Not on your life!

The discovery of radioactivity created a momentary chaos in chemistry and physics; but it soon led to a fuller interpretation of the old ideas. It dispersed many difficulties, harmonized many discords, and yea, more! It shewed the substance of Universe as a simplicity of Light and Life, manners to compose atoms, themselves capable of deeper self-realization through fresh complexities and organizations, each with its own peculiar powers and pleasures, each pursuing its path through the world where all things are possible.

Love is a virtue; it grows stronger and purer and less selfish by applying it to what it loathes; but theft is a vice involving the slave-idea that one's neighbor is superior to oneself.

I must make MAGICK the essential factor in the life of ALL. In presenting this book to the world, I must then explain and justify my position by formulating a definition of MAGICK and setting forth its main principles in such a way that ALL may understand instantly that their souls, their lives, in every relation with every other human being and every circumstance, depend upon MAGICK and the right comprehension and right application thereof.

The old spelling MAGICK has been adopted throughout in order to distinguish the Science of the Magi from all its counterfeits.

I am alone. There is no God where I am.

It is only necessary to destroy in oneself the roots of those motives which determine a man's course, in order to enjoy the omnipotence and immunity of a god.

It's no good trying to teach people who need to be taught.

Alas the Master; so he sinks in death. But whoso knows the mystery of man Sees life and death as curves of the same plan

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.

Morality can muddle mystical understanding and virtue is only necessary in so far as it favours success. All wisdom must be encompassed in order to achieve enlightenment.

Destiny is an absolutely definite and inexorable ruler. Physical ability and moral determination count for nothing. It is impossible to perform the simplest act when the gods say no. I have no idea how they bring pressure to bear on such occasions; I only know that it is irresistible.

Roughly speaking, any man with energy and enthusiasm ought to be able to bring at least a dozen others round to his opinion in the course of a year no matter how absurd that opinion might be. We see every day in politics, in business, in social life, large masses of people brought to embrace the most revolutionary ideas, sometimes within a few days. It is all a question of getting hold of them in the right way and working on their weak points.

There is no grace: there is no guilt: This is the Law: DO WHAT THOU WILT!

They look for a victim to chivy, and howl him down, and finally lynch him in a sheer storm of sexual frenzy which they honestly imagine to be moral indignation, patriotic passion or some equally allowable emotion, it may be an innocent Negro, a Jew like Leo Frank, a harmless half-witted German; a Christ-like idealist of the type of Debs, an enthusiastic reformer like Emma Goldman.

30. If Will stops and cries Why, invoking Because, then Will stops an does naught. 31. If power asks why, then power is weakness.

Don't talk for five minutes, there's a good chap! I've a strange feeling come over me--almost as if I were going to think!

I admit that my visions can never mean to other men as much as they do to me. I do not regret this. All I ask is that my results should convince seekers after truth that there is beyond doubt something worth while seeking, attainable by methods more or less like mine. I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics, or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle.

The nails from a suicide's coffin, and the skull of the parricide, were of course no trouble; for Vesquit never traveled without these household requisites.

Religion itself becomes offensively monotonous. On every point of vantage are pagodas -- stupid stalagmites of stagnant piety.

What is it in absinthe that makes it a separate cult? The effects of its abuse are totally distinct from those of other stimulants. Even in ruin and in degradation it remains a thing apart: its victims wear a ghastly aureole all their own, and in their peculiar hell yet gloat with a sinister perversion of pride that they are not as other men.

As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men of science on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices pop out, reinforced by the self-confidence which the power of numbers is bound to bestow.

A madhouse of frenzied moneymaking and frenzied pleasure-seeking, with none of the corners chipped off. It is beautifully situatedand the air reminds one curiously of Edinburgh.

Toronto as a city carries out the idea of Canada as a country. It is a calculated crime against the aspirations of the soul and the affection of the heart.

I am the blue-lidded daughter of Sunset; I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night-sky.