Astar_Mundi wrote:nipha333 wrote:Magister C wrote:
The Victorian era would have been a difficult time for a free thinker to have been born into, Crowley's life was marred from a young age with the perverted misery of the gospels and its sanctimonious indoctrination, imagine having to deconstruct the oppressive edifice of these mores in those times?
.
I definitely understand that it was not a matter of who gives a shit Ill make it up, and mostly circumstantial. It is impossible to imagine his upbringing for me, as I was raised by a weed growing deadhead who to this day refuses to wear socks and shoes lol. I also had a very involved grandmother who was a bibliophile to the extreme, so where he had drawbacks, I have had benefits. I do have a high level of respect for him despite the blurring of thelema with his kabbalistic rambles as you called them.Magister C wrote:
He was often LHP in the way he lived, and then he would absorb his consciousness into Samadhi as well, I don't think he could ever figure out where he truly stood on this. Even his essay in Magick Without Tears' is not as clear cut as people believe.
I feel like the confusion here is compounded by the fact that Crowley himself wasnt clear on what left or right consisted of. Then this confusion about which thelema is is further compounded by the fact that the Crowley section in the one reasonable exposition on the matter, Flowers Lords of the Left Hand Path is kind of superficial and one can tell pretty quickly that as knowledgable as Flowers may be he has never actually worked crowleys system, but only read it.
Flowers is a Sethian, most of Lords of the Left Hand Path, which is an excellent book, is biased towards that particular branch of LHP thought.
Ergo, I would not expect Flowers to be a Thelemite of any degree- why would he? He already has his own path.
Well I dont expect him to be a thelemite. My point is simply that he makes a lot of general statements about crowleys system that arent necessarily true. And his perspective on crowley is based on a very limited reading of the material. Coming from a decade of vigorously working and studying the thelemic part of crowleys work and the system it presents, my conclusion is that it is essentially setian in nature, and the perceived contradictions between basic setian thought and basic thelemic thought are come by via crowleys confusion and blindspots, not the thelemic material itself. I mean Liber AL screams setian philosophy at the top of its lungs. Liber A'Ash screams the god creation aspect in The Book of Knowing the Spiral Force of Ra and the Slaying of Apep. The "become a star" motif screams "The Tale of Two Brothers" .. The ritual that dragged crowley into the receiving of Liber AL is setian. Etc. Etc.
Actually I would go so far as to say that the core thelemic material is more Setian than some of the absurdity that Temple of Set members have tossed into the world, Like the book Apophis from micheal kelly.