Aleister Crowley & William Butler Yeats Get into an Occult Battle, Pitting White Magic Against Black
Aleister Crowley---English magician and founder of the religion of Thelema---has been admired as a powerful theorist and practitioner of what he called “Magick,” and reviled as a spoiled, abusive buffoon. Falling somewhere between those two camps, we find the opinion of Crowley’s bitter rival, the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, who once passionately wrote that the study of magic was “the most important pursuit of my life….. The mystical life is the center of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.”
Crowley would surely say the same, but his magic was of a much darker, more obsessive variety, and his success as a poet insignificant next to Yeats. “Crowley was jealous,” argues the blog Rune Soup, “He was never able to speak the language of poetic symbol with the confidence of a native speaker in the way Yeats definitely could.” In a 1948 Partisan Review essay, literary critic and Yeats biographer Richard Ellmann tells the story differently, drily reporting on the conflict as its participants saw it—as a genuine war between competing forms of practical magic.
yeats-journal
Having been ejected from the occult Theosophical society for his magical experiments, writes Jamie James at Lapham’s Quarterly, Yeats joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, “an even more exotic cult, which claimed direct descent from the hermetic tradition of the Renaissance and into remote antiquity.” At various times, the order included writers Arthur Machen and Bram Stoker, Yeats’ beloved Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne, and famous magicians Arthur Edward Waite and Crowley. (Just above, see a page from Yeats’ Golden Dawn journal. See several more here.)
“When Crowley showed a tendency to use his occult powers for evil rather than for good,” Ellmann writes, “the adepts of the order, Yeats among them, decided not to allow him to be initiated into the inner circle; they feared that he would profane the mysteries and unleash powerful magic forces against humanity.” Crowley's ouster lead to a confrontation in 1900 that might make you think—depending on your frame of reference—of the warring magicians on South Park or of Susanna Clark’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, or both. "Crowley refused to accept their decision," writes Ullmann, and after some astral attacks on Yeats,
.… in Highlander’s tartan, with a black Crusader’s cross on his breast… Crowley arrived at the Golden Dawn temple in London. Making the sign of the pentacle inverted and shouting menaces at the adepts, Crowley climbed the stairs. But Yeats and two other white magicians came resolutely forward to meet him, ready to protect the holy place at any cost. When Crowley came within range the forces of good struck out with their feet and kicked him downstairs.
This almost slapstick vanquishing became known as “the Battle of Blythe Road” and has been immortalized in a publication of that very name, with accounts from Crowley, Yeats, and Golden Dawn adepts William Westcott, Florence Farr and others. But the war was not won, Ellmann notes, and Crowley went looking for converts---or victims---in London, while Yeats attempted to stop him with “the requisite spells and exorcisms.” One such spell supposedly sent a vampire that “bit and tore at his flesh” as it lay beside Crowley all night. Despite Yeats' supernatural interventions, one of Crowley’s targets, a young painter named Althea Gyles, was “finally forced to give way entirely to his baleful fascination.”
http://www.openculture.com/2016/10/aleister-crowley-william-butler-yeats-get-into-an-occult-battle.html
"Aleister Crowley---English magician and founder of the religion of Thelema---has been admired as a powerful theorist and practitioner of what he called “Magick,” and reviled as a spoiled, abusive buffoon."
"Spoiled, abusive buffoon"? Maybe I need to read up on my Yeats... "
If you're wondering what this has to do with anything -
The manipulation of Chaos was central to Crowleys belief system.
It is also central to the belief system of the alt- right, as well as Duginism, the architect of Putin's plan for Russian world domination.
The Pepe meme represents chaos.
"At some point, someone on 4chan happened to seize on a coincidence: There was, in fact, an Egyptian god named Kek. An androgynous god who could take either male or female form, Kek originally was depicted in female form as possessing the head of a frog or a cat and a serpent when male; but during the Greco-Roman period, the male form was depicted as a frog-headed man.
More importantly, Kek was portrayed as a bringer of chaos and darkness, which happened to fit perfectly with the Alt-Right’s self-image as being primarily devoted to destroying the existing world order.
In the fertile imaginations at play on 4chan’s image boards and other Alt-Right gathering spaces, this coincidence took on a life of its own, leading to wide-ranging speculation that Pepe — who, by then, had not only become closely associated with the Alt-Right, but also with the candidacy of Donald Trump — was actually the living embodiment of Kek. And so the Cult of Kek was born.
Constructed to reflect Alt-Right politics, the online acolytes of the “religion” constructed in short order a panoply of artifacts of the satirical church, including a detailed theology, discussions about creating “meme magick,” books and audio tapes, even a common prayer: (*which I will not post, as it is vile and disgusting.)
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2017/explaining-alt-right-%E2%80%98deity%E2%80%99-their-%E2%80%98meme-magic%E2%80%99
Having an understanding of what makes these people tick is, in my opinion, the beginning of formulating a winning strategy to fight them.
From the link -
"Ellmann’s both humorous and unsettling narrative shows us Crowley-as-predator, a characterization the wealthy Englishman had apparently earned, as “responsible governments excluded him from one country after another lest he bring to bear upon their inhabitants his hostile psychic ray.”
Sound familiar?
And make no mistake, we are fighting for our lives.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Is a most important tool in any survival kit.
That is encouraging, there are no doubt some who will read this and conclude that I am bonkers.
BTW, has anyone ever noticed the similarity -
Yeats
Potter
I am a believer in science, and despise the promotion of ignorance to serve the interests of rulers.
Climate change denial being a case in point.
How do we define the human sense of wonder and curiosity that makes us want to explore and understand our world, rather than remain stuck in the comfort zone of willful ignorance?
When I watch a beautiful sunset, I know those beautiful colors are just the suns rays refraction in the atmosphere.
Why, then, since the dawn of time, are we so moved by natural beauty?
Remove the mystery from the universe, and what reason would there be to explore?
In 1678, however, flaws in Casaubon's dating were discerned by Ralph Cudworth, who argued that Casaubon's allegation of forgery could only be applied to three of the seventeen treatises contained within the Corpus Hermeticum. Moreover, Cudworth noted Casaubon's failure to acknowledge the codification of these treatises as a late formulation of a pre-existing oral tradition. According to Cudworth, the texts must be viewed as a terminus ad quem and not a quo. Lost Greek texts, and many of the surviving vulgate books, contained discussions of alchemy clothed in philosophical metaphor.[29]
In the 19th century, Walter Scott placed the date of the Hermetic texts shortly after 200 AD, but W. Flinders Petrie placed their origin between 200 and 500 BC.[30]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeticism
Quite timely, with the recent turn of events!