Many of you may have probably heard of Aleister Crowley. He was an English occultist who lived until the mid 1900s. He was actually born Edward Alexander Crowley, into a Christian family, but then on a trip to Sweden he had a life changing experience which persuaded him to switch from Christianity to the more mystical. He marked this spiritual calling by changing his name to Aleister.
His interests combined the esoteric with the erotic. He published volumes of poetry, which I have never read because poetry is just not my thing, but it has been described as "the most disgusting piece of erotica in the English language." So there's that. He soon became involved in secret societies like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, although he gradually drifted away and moved into his own set of beliefs.
He founded the religion of Thelema and considered himself a prophet who was entrusted with guiding humanity into the Aeon of Horus. The word thelema basically stands for "to will, to wish, want or purpose." Crowley actually referred to himself as Beast 666 and Ipsissimus, which means "higher than the gods." Prideful, much?
Crowley and his wife had a spiritual experience in Egypt and began to channel and dictate a text known as "The Book of the Law" through a being that referred to itself as Aiwass. (Crowley previously claimed his first mystical experience happened through a homosexual act which bought him "an encounter with an immanent deity." If you really want to do a deep dive you can look up ancient cult temple prostitutes, but maybe it's better to leave that one alone. God often comes across as an bipolar dictator in the Old Testament, but when you realize what he was trying to protect the Israelites from, it makes more sense.) The religion of Thelema got most of it's principal gods and goddesses from the ancient Egyptian religions. The highest goddess was Nuit, who is considered the Great Mother. Side note- I wonder if Nuit is a version of the "queen of heaven" that is mentioned in Jeremiah? Maybe she is another form of Ishtar/Ashtoreth/Inanna.
"The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven. And they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger." -Jeremiah 7:18
So back to Aiwass....In 1903 Crowley married his wife, Rose Kelly, and they took a honeymoon to Egypt. By this point in his life he had been practicing magick for years already. He participated in a six month black magick ritual where he attempted to evoke Lucifer, Satan, Leviathan and Belial and bind them to gain control over them. Needless to say, he was not intimidated by the dark side. While in Egypt at a museum exhibit about the Egyptian god Horus, he was able to contact his holy guardian angel called Aiwass, and over three days he listened to a disembodied voice and wrote "The Book of the Law." The main mantra of the religion is 'do whatever you want, that's the law." Aiwass was supposedly the passive, introverted part of Horus.
Why am I telling you so much about Aleister Crowley and magick? Well, first off, because magick is real. Sex magick, blood magick, chaos magick, sympathetic magick, contagious magick. Secondly, to show that people like Crowley have existed since the beginning and they definitely still exist now. But mostly I wanted to post about this because of Aiwass. Let's look at Aiwass for a moment. Or at least a drawing that Crowley did identifying what Aiwass looked like to him. LAM =Aiwass
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