[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
understand a man as irrational as Hitler, or that still more irrational thing, the breakdown of
nineteenth-century Western civilisation and its imposing heritage. We therefore make no
apology for continuing in our bizarre quest for clues which will enable us to understand these
matters, even if it initially appears that our subject-matter is only of marginal relevance, and
best left to cranks. The word initially' must be stressed, for subsequent events will reveal the
importance of our peculiar clues; furthermore, it is an essential part of our historical method
to neglect nothing, no matter how outlandish, that may better inform our comprehension.
Our first guide will be Aleister Crowley, who, though he now possesses many more disciples
than ever in his own lifetime, is still dismissed by most of those who have heard of him as a
charlatan, a madman, or a debauchee. Despite these dispiriting labels, he is of interest to us,
for he became one of the very few men who understood the time in which he lived, a
statement which requires some form of explanation.
Crowley was born in Warwickshire in 1875, the year of the foundation of the Theosophical
Society. He survived a strict Plymouth Brethren upbringing, rebelled against it, and, after
coming down from Cambridge University, was initiated into the Order of the Golden Dawn in
1898. He became involved in the 1900 quarrel between Mathers and Yeats, took the side of
Mathers, fought a magical dubl with Yeats, and then departed for Mexico, where he set
world mountain-climbing records, wrote poetry, and tirelessly practised the magic arts,
having sworn to renounce all that he possessed for the sake of illumination.
From Mexico he went to India and Ceylon, where he worked at yoga with Allan Bennett,
attained to the trance known as Dhyana, and embraced the philosophy of Buddhism. After
an abortive but record-setting attempt to climb the world's second highest mountain, K2, he
returned to Europe, and married a woman of society, Rose Edith Kelly. The couple set out
on another world tour; by this time Crowley had abandoned ceremonial magic in favour of
his Buddhism.
In April 1904, Crowley and his wife were in Cairo, and she asked him to perform -a magical
ritual purely out of curiosity, having little interest in the subject. Soon afterwards, she became
inspired', and declared to Crowley that they are waiting for you', eventually informing him
that they' meant in particular the god Horus. A sceptical Crowley carried out a series of tests
based on the traditional magical associations which this god possesses, and though Rose
had no knowledge at all of occultism, she guessed correctly every time against total odds of
21,168,000 to 1. The upshot of all this was that Crowley performed an Invocation to the god
Horus, the hawk-headed Egyptian God of war, and obeyed his wife's instructions to sit at a
desk in his hotel room on the 8, 9 and 10 April between 12 noon and 1 o'clock. A being
which announced himself as Aiwass appeared behind him on each occasion, and dictated to
him the three chapters of a book called Liber Al vel Legis or The Book of The Law.
Judged on one level, The Book of the Law is an extraordinarily beautiful prose-poem, but it
declares itself to be much, much more. It proclaimed nothing less than that one age had
18
Publisher Love(+)Wisdom(=)Truth
GERALD SUSTER HITLER AND THE AGE OF HORUS
come to an end, and another had replaced it. The old age was that of Osiris, the god who
died and rose again, known also as Adonis, Attis, Dionysus, and Jesus Christ: the now age
was that of Horus, the Crowned and Conquering Child. Hence The Book of the Law
announced a new ethic for mankind.
The first and foremost command was Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be the Whole of the Law,
which means that man must know and understand the essence of his self, his true will, and
do it and nothing else. The second, Love is the Law, Love Under Will, proclaimed that the
nature of things is love, or the urge for union. The third, Every man and every woman is a
star, declared that each human being is unique insofar as his or her true will is concerned,
and to this was added, The word of Sin is Restriction, which meant that all restraints upon
the true will are evil and must be destroyed.
Much of the document, however, was not as attractive as the above. In no uncertain terms it
asserted that before the religion of the new age could take effect, the old aeon must be
swept away as ruthlessly as was the pagan world of the Roman Empire, and that the planet
would therefore be bathed in blood. Barbarism, lust and cruelty were prophesied, and the
destruction of all Christian sentiments. The Book of the Law therefore challenged the cultural
tradition of two thousand years.
It asserted the reality of magic, of mysterious and irrational forces, of Unknown Supermen,
one of whom was its author. It exulted in inequality between the masters, who know and do
their will, and slaves, who do not. It demanded courage, blood, fire, irresponsibility, excess
and ecstasy: it denounced all old religions, democracy, mediocrity, pacifism, logic,
humanitarianism and stability. It is uncomfortable reading.
Aleister Crowley was the first to find it so. As a Buddhist, he could not accept that Existence
is pure joy'; as a Shelleyan humanist, he could not accept its exaltation of destruction; as a
philosophical sceptic, he was embarrassed, by its hailing of him as The Beast 666, come to
destroy Christianity, even though that was what his own mother had called him. He did not
want to be a prophet, and deliberately lost the manuscript, though it obstinately refused to
disappear permanently, and thrust itself upon his attention again in 1909, when he was
finally moved to take it seriously.
But how seriously should we take The Book of the Law? It was certainly not the conscious
composition of Aleister Crowley; some have argued that it was an automatic writing
produced by his unconscious. Whatever it was, it is of unusual interest, for, as we shall see,
certain of its precepts took effect in a most alarming way, and hardly in the manner that
Aleister Crowley initially anticipated. Let us content ourselves with the statement that the
destruction of the old world was announced in 1904, when it was also announced that world
war was imminent, and that entirely new values would replace old and outmoded ones.
Of course, the people of 1904 had no idea that the Age of Horus was upon them, being only
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]