Aleister Crowley- The ‘Great Beast’ & the Gods of Greece

The Vir gesture- Crowley in 1910

I’m currently researching a new book and my reading has led me back to the work of Aleister Crowley, which I touched on briefly in my examination of the Great God Pan. Then, I focussed solely upon his poetry; my recent research has taken me deeper into his many other writings, and has revealed to me how extensively he drew upon the ancient Greek myths.

Crowley’s religion of Thelema was blended from ideas borrowed freely from the tarot, astrology, yoga, alchemy, Hinduism, Taoism, Qabalah, the I Ching, Gnosticism, Christianity, Rosicrucianism and the ancient religions of Greece, Rome and Egypt. The inevitable result is that Crowley’s ultimate conclusions- and the magickal practices and ceremonies based upon these- are highly idiosyncratic and complex. In his many books, he often moves from one discipline or mythology to another without warning so that- as he recognised- it can be hard to keep up without the level of deep study that he himself had invested. To a degree, this is further compounded by the fact that he will use multiple names for the same divinities- Dionysos may also be called Bacchus or Iacchus; he may refer to both Venus and Aphrodite or to Pan, Aegipan, Capricorn, the phallus, Priapus and the Devil.

Nevertheless, and although Crowley will refer to the Egyptian deities quite often, his main pantheon is drawn from the classical myths of Greece and Rome. The ultimate aim, in all his work, was to rediscover and re-awaken the great nature gods of the pagan past- by whom he meant, primarily, Pan and Dionysos-Bacchus. This was to be done through ceremonies and ‘workings’ (opera) that relied upon Bacchus, Aphrodite and Apollo- in other words, wine, women and song. A combination of drugs (alcohol, but plenty of other intoxicants too), music and dance and sex magick, would help the celebrant transcend themselves and make contact with the ‘godhead.’ Generally, it appears, this ultimate god is to be identified with Pan- hence Crowley’s declaration in The World’s Tragedy (1908) that he wanted to “seduce the boys of England” and get them to join him in the renewed worship of Pan, thereby bringing about “the new heaven and the new earth.”

His ceremonies were diverse in the pantheon they would try to invoke, all the same. For example, over seven weeks in October and November 1911, Crowley, with the help of Victor Neuberg as dancer and his lover Leila Waddell as musician, publicly celebrated the ‘Rites of Eleusis’ at the Caxton Hall in Westminster, London. Neuburg, before his involvement with Crowley, had been a member of Cambridge University’s Pan Society and had published a volume of poetry titled The Triumph of Pan. In advance publicity for the Rites, Crowley declared “We are the poets! We are the children of the wood and stream, of mist and mountain, of sun and wind! We are the Greeks! And to us the rites of Eleusis should open the doors to Heaven and we shall enter in and see God face to face.” His aim was to contact “the spirit of the Infinite All, great Pan” which would be achieved by means of “dance in the moonlight before Dionysus, and delight under the stars with Aphrodite.” Over each of the seven weeks of the performance, a rite for a different classical god was celebrated, these being Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sol, Venus, Mercury and Luna. Within these rites other gods were prominent, for example, Isis was central to the rite of Venus, and Pan to the rite of Luna. A year earlier, Crowley had staged other rites at which Neuburg had performed the “dance of Syrinx and Pan in honour of our lady Artemis.”

For Crowley, Pan was “the Aegipan, the All;” the goat god was also the “All devourer, the all begetter” (Magick in Theory and Practice, 1927, 36; Confessions, 603). In his 1935 text, One Star in Sight- A Glimpse of the Structure and System of the Great White Brotherhood (that is, Crowley’s magical organisation called the A A or Silver Star) Crowley declared “Do what thou wilt! For every man And every woman is a star! Pan is not dead; he liveth Pan! Break down the bar!”

Crowley frequently used the so-called ‘Vir’ gesture. This may be familiar from the well-known 1910 photograph of ‘the Beast’ wearing his ‘tea-cosy’ magician’s hat (properly, his head-dress of Horus), staring intently at the camera, both hands raised on either side of his head, fists clenched and thumbs protruding (see head of page). This symbolised the horns of a ram, the phallus and, hence, Pan/ Bacchus.

Pan was a real and continual presence for Crowley. He was invoked regularly in his rituals and in his poetry; the Hymn to Pan which I featured in the book The Great God Pan was, Crowley had to admit, “the most powerful enchantment ever written.” Recounting how he wrote the Book of Lies in 1913, he ecstatically described how he felt “the perfume of Pan pervading, the taste of him utterly filling my mouth, so the tongue breaks forth into weird and monstrous speech. The embrace of him is intense in every centre of pain and pleasure… An end to loneliness as to all, Pan! Pan! Io, Pan!”

As will be apparent from the foregoing, Crowley’s conception of Pan was highly sensual and sexual. It’s pretty well known that Crowley practiced sex magick and that he regarded gay sex as being especially powerful. He discovered this in North Africa when he had intercourse with his collaborator Victor Neuburg, dedicating the act to Pan and subsequently realising that sex could operate as a powerful sacrament- “The orgies of Bacchus and Pan are no less sacramental than the masses of Jesus” he declared. In his Magical Diary of 1923, Crowley recorded that, between September 1914 and 1918 he had engaged in 309 workings of sexual magic, of which 40 were in praise or thanksgiving to the Lord Pan, 22 were to fascinate mistresses etc, 17 to acquire sex force and attractiveness and 8 to attract a new mistress (as this record may imply, he often used prostitutes for these opera). At the Abbey of Thelema on Sicily, where he lived in the early 1920s, Crowley decorated the walls with murals of his own design. One depicted a man being penetrated by Pan, his ejaculate falling onto the body of his ‘Scarlet Woman’- his sexual and magical partner.

Charles Gleyre, Venus Pandemos, 1852

The goddesses, such as Artemis and Aphrodite, “the fond goddess of love,” were not forgotten in all of this either. They were invoked both in poetry and in ritual, most especially Aphrodite, for Crowley’s “method of Aphrodite” was simply another term for his ‘sex magick.’

Over and above its occult potential, there’s no denying that Crowley enjoyed sex a great deal. Writing under the pseudonym George Archibald Bishop, he published White Stains in 1898; this is a collection of pornographic- if not obscene- verse, describing a variety of sexual tastes. The Preface pretends to review Bishop’s literary career: “he grows fierce in the mysteries of Sapphism and the cult of Venus Aversa [anal sex] with women; later of the same forms of vice with men, all mingled with wild talk of religious dogma and a general exaltation of Priapism…” One of the poems in the collection, dedicated to the Jolie Marion, lovingly and lustfully praises her body- “the passionate mound/ White and, for Venus’ temple, round…” The poem Necrophilia continues such a theme, comparing the smell of a lover’s decaying body to “Venus, born/ Of entrails foaming like the sea.” There is a love poem addressed to a Hermaphrodite (which I discuss in my posting on Swinburne’s poem on the same subject) and lastly, there is Ode to Venus Callipyge (the goddess with the big bum), the chorus of which addresses the goddess as:

“Daughter of Lust by the foam of the sea!
Mother of flame! Sister of shame!
Tiger that Sin nor her son cannot tame!
Worship to thee! Glory to thee!
Venus Callipyge, mother of me.”

The Ode continues, praising the power of this Venus:

“Which of the gods is like thee, our queen?
Venus Callipyge, nameless, nude,
Thou with the knowledge of all indued
Secrets of life…

Who has such pleasures and pains for hire?
Who can awake such a mortal fire
In the veins of a man, that deathly days
Have robbed of the masteries of desire?”

The paean concludes:

“Thou art the fair, the wise, the divine,
Thou art our mother, our goddess, our life,
Thou art our passion, our sorrow, our strife,
Thou, on whose forehead no lights ever shine,
Thou, our Redeemer, our mistress, our wife,
Thou, barren sister of deathlier brine,
Venus Callipyge, mother of mine!”

In the A A magazine, Equinox (vol.3 no.1 for 1919), Crowley’s poem The Sevenfold Sacrament even imagined an erotic encounter with the goddess of love:

“Zeus his dangerous daughter,
Aphrodite, from the water
Risen all shining, her soft arms
Open, all her spells and charms
Melted to one lure divine
Of her red mouth pressed to mine…”

Rightly, perhaps, Crowley recalled that the goddess could be terrible as well as loving- in Abysmos from White Stains he described how the “Fearful, nude Venus grins.”

More notably still (if this is possible), in the Liber Agape, his magical sex guide, Crowley advised that, during intercourse, the woman should chant an invocation to Venus (in Latin). Even in English, this might have proved a difficult and distracting thing: “O Venus, risen from the sea/ Come thou daughter of the Father/ Listen to the bland songs of the penis, I pray/ Let it be no sin to us to have buggered the vile arse/ But let the vagina always be hot with my love.” Then again, maybe the words would stick in the mind…

Crowley’s interpretation and application of the ancient deities could be highly individual, but he certainly gave them new vigour and visibility. Any discussion of their role in the culture of the twentieth century and beyond cannot now ignore Aleister Crowley’s influence.