Authors: Lawrence Sutin
ISBN-13: 9780312288976, ISBN-10: 0312288972
Format: Paperback
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Date Published: January 2002
Edition: First Edition
Lawrence Sutin is a professor at the University of Minnesota. His previous works include Divine Invasions and Shifting Realities, on the life and works, respectively, of writer Philip K. Dick.
Aleister Crowley was a blustery coward, an arrogant, misogynistic racist with fascist leanings, and a callous user, as often threatened by his sexuality as he claimed to be liberated by it. But he was also a groundbreaking poet and an iconoclastic visionary whose literary and cultural legacies extend far beyond the limits of his reputation. This controversial individual, a frightening mixture of egomania and self-loathing, has inspired passionate—but seldom fair—assesments by historians. Sutin, by treating Crowley as a cultural phenomenon, and not simply a sorcerer or a charlatan, convinces skeptic readers that the self-styled "Beast" remains a fascinating study in eccentricity.
The name Aleister Crowley has generally been associated with hedonistic, self-absorbed, occult-infatuated Victorian English intellectuals. Sutin (creative writing, Hamlin Coll.; A Postcard Memoir) does much to expand upon this simplistic perception, showing that while Crowley was indeed all these things, he was also much more. Crowley was an arrogant misogynist, yet he was also a very gifted poet and visionary who painfully drove himself to seek deeper visions through drug-induced vision quests and rampant sexual experimentation. He was prominent in the movement to bring Eastern philosophies into Christian England and America and sought enlightenment in the rawness of nature. Sutin wonderfully details the eccentricities of this puzzling man while being careful not to overburden his narrative with academic psychological theories or personal observations and conclusions. The result is a fascinating, easily readable narrative about one of the most interesting cultural phenomena of the late Victorian period. Recommended for all libraries.--Glenn Masuchika, Chaminade Univ., Honolulu, HI Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\
Acknowledgments | vii |
Introduction | 1 |
An Overview of the Magical Tradition, in Which It Is Suggested | |
that the Raging Battle Between Jesus and Satan Be | |
(For the Moment) Set Aside in Order that the True | |
Nature of the Magus Be Understood | |
One | 15 |
The Strange Transformation of One Edward Alexander ("Alick") | |
Crowley, a Pious Christian Boy of the Late Victorian Upper | |
Class, Into Aleister Crowley, Poet, Gent., and Magical Adept | |
in Waiting (1875-98) | |
Two | 49 |
In Which Aleister Crowley Takes the Magical Name Perdurabo | |
("I Shall Endure to the End") But Appears to Lose His Way | |
Amidst the Schisms of The Golden Dawn and the Temptations | |
of the Vale of Tears (1898-1900) | |
Three | 80 |
Years of Wandering in Which Crowley Pursues the Heights | |
of Magic and Mountains, Embraces Buddhism, Then | |
Abandons All for the Love of a Woman and the Life | |
of Country Laird (1900-04) | |
Four | 117 |
The Birth of the New Aeon (1904-05) | |
Five | 148 |
The Assault on Kanchenjunga, the Establishment of a | |
New Magical Order, and the Wanderlusts of a Magus | |
(1905-08) | |
Six | 192 |
The Creation of The Equinox, the Rites of Eleusis, | |
and a Confrontation in the Sahara with the God | |
of Chaos (1909-14) | |
Seven | 242 |
In Exile in America, Crowley Endures Poverty and | |
Accusations of Treason as Ordeals Necessary to Becoming | |
a Magus (1914-19) | |
Eight | 278 |
The Founding and the Ruin of the Abbey | |
of Thelema (1920-23) | |
Nine | 310 |
Ten A Staged Suicide, an Unavenged Libel, and the | |
Equinox of the Gods (1930-36) | 351 |
Eleven The Final Years of a Magus in the Guise of a | |
Disreputable Old Man (1937-47) | 382 |
EPILOGUE An Assortment of Posthumous Assessments and | |
Developments | 421 |
Endnotes | 425 |
Selected Bibliography | 465 |
Index | 467 |