The Beast with Two Backs, Aleiser Crowley, Sex Magic and the Exhaustion of Modernity - Hugh B. Urban

Aleister Crowley, naming himself the “Great Beast 666,” is according to Urban “One of the most influential and yet most often misunderstood figures in the history of Western new religious movements.” (Urban, page 7) His article tries to offer a fresh approach to Crowley, by placing him within contemporary debates about modernism and postmodernism. 

According to Urban “Crowley was, …, a stunning reflection of some of the most acute cultural contradictions at the heart of modern Western civilization in the early twentieth century.” (Urban, page 7) He also notes: “A uniquely Janus-faced characterr, he reflects both the “Faustian” will of modernism as well as its tragic failure and exhaustion at mid-century in the aftermath of the two World Wars.

Crowley was Infamous for his drug use and sexual habits, was exiled from several countries and finally died as a heroine addict without money. 

According to Urban Crowley is today one of the most influential figures in the modern revival of magic in Neopagan witchcraft.

In this article Urban argues that Crowley is not only an important and neglected figure in the history of new religions, but that he also opens an illuminating window into the social, political and religious history of the twentieth century.

He hopes “to show that Crowley is by no means the arch-enemy of modern Western civilization; on the contrary, he is in many respects the epitome of Western modernity[…] (page 8)

As Paul Heelas has argued, many new religious movements do not represent so much a rejection of modernity; rather, they are often better described as powerful affirmations of certain basic modern ideals, such as progress, individualism and free will, and thus represent a kind of “celebration of the self and sacralization of modernity. Crowley is one of the clearest example of this trend. (page 8)

“In his own writings, [Crowley] depicts himself as a solitary voice of freedom crying in the wilderness of modernity, a champion of the individual will against the dull conformity of the modern state.” (Urban, page 8)

He is perhaps the embodiment of what Marshall Berman calls “the Faustian individual,” who expresses the grand aspirations and tragic failings of modernity as a whole.

“Crowley’s ultimate goal was one of transgression on every level – to explode the boundaries of all morality and conventional models of sexuality in order to achieve an intense experience of superhuman liberation.” (page 8)

According to Urban “Crowley also reveals the first signs of the collapse of Western modernity in the middle of the twentieth century.” (page 8). Crowley explored every limit of sexual excess and transgression, but then died in 1947 of drugs addiction, failed to realize his ideals of world transformation. Urban argues that this parallels the most grandiose ideals of Western modernity. Which entail ideals of infinite progress toward a utopian social order, ending in the tragic breakdown with Holocaust and the devastations of the second World War.

Crowley’s Life and context:

The controversial mage Crowley was born in 1875 as the son of a preacher in the highly puritanical Plymouth Brethren sect. After his father passed away he inherited a large amount of money which he used to travel the world, work on his writings and climb mountains. From an early age Crowley was fascinated by poetry and paganism. 

In 1898 he was introduced to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which was his first contact with esotericism and magic. The Golden Dawn was an eclectic blending of a number of Western esoteric traditions, including Hermeticism, Freemansory, Rosicrucianism and Kabbalah. 

In 1899 he also began to explore a variety of Eastern spiritual traditions. (Buddhist and Hindu practices). And it seems likely he also learned something of the esoteric techniques of Indian Tantra. He soon after started to engage in sexual magic with his partner, Rose Kelly.

In 1904 Crowley received his first great revelation “and the knowledge that he was to be the herald of a new era in human history. According to Crowley’s own account, his guardian angel, Aiwass appeared to him and dictated the Book of the Law (Liber Legis). His most famous work, the Book of the law announces the dawn of a third aeon of mankind: the first aeon was that of the Goddess Isis, centered around matriarchy and the worship of the Great Mother; the second aeon was that of Osiris, during which the patriarchal religions of suffering and death –i.e., Judaism and Christianity – rose to power. Finally with the revelation of the Book of the Law, a new aeon of the son, Horus, was born. “In this aeon the emphasis is on the self or will, not on anything external such as gods or priests.” (page 9/10)

1920-1922: “He founded his own spiritual community called the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu, Sicily. The original inspiration came from Rabelais’ classic work, Gargantua, which describes an ideal spiritual community that transcends the hypocritical corruption of the Christian monastreries. Called “Theleme” (from the Greek, meaning “will”), the government of the community was “do what you will” in a joyous blending of Stoic virtues with Christian spirituality. Crowly took Rabelais’ ideal a good deal further, however, by creating a utopian community in which every desire could be gratified and every impulse expressed through free experimentation in drugs, sex and physical excess.” (page 10)
 1922: published Diary of a Drug Fiend, to make some money to pay for his drug use. This book as the title suggests is about Peter Pendragon who rapidly descents into cocaine and heroin addiction, exploring every possible sensual pleasure and moral vice.

In sum, Crowley is a remarkable reflection of the era in which he was born. On the one hand, he deliberately set out to overthrow all established values; on the other, he merely expressed the darker underside or ‘secret life’ of the Victorian world in which he was raised. (page 11)

“He grew out of the matrix of Victorianism…. He was one of many who helped tear down the false, hypocritical, self-righteous attitudes of the time. What is peculiar about Crowley’s was is … that in his revolt against his parents and God he set himself up in God’s place.”” (page 11)

Sex as a sacrament: sex magic and the modern preoccupation with sexuality

Crowley got his scandalous reputation from his practices of sexual magic. 
“Rejecting the morality of his Christian youth, Crowley set out to overturn what he saw as the oppressive, hypocritical attitudes of Victorian England, by identifying sex as the most central aspect of the human being and the most profound source of magical power. The popular press, of course took no end of delight in sensationalizing Crowley’s promiscuity, which was described in elaborate, often hilarious detail throughout the newspapers of the day.” (page 11)

“As he wrote in his Confessions, the main reason for the violent turmoil of the modern world lies in the repression of the sexual instinct. Conversely, the surest way to solve our contemporary problems lies in its liberation: 

“The feeling that [sex] is shameful and the sense of sin cause concealment, which … creates distortion, neurosis and ends in explosion. We deliberately produce an abscess and wonder why it is full of pus… why it bursts in stench and corruption. The book of Law solves the sexual problem completely. Each individual has an absolute right to satisfy his sexual instinct… The one injunction is to treat all such acts as sacraments.” (page 11/12)

Thus, Crowley lived what Foucoult calls the ‘repressive hypothesis’ that is, the belief that modern Western society has denied sexuality and what is most needed is the full liberation of the sexual instinct. “Love was a challenge to Christianity.” Crowley writes, “it was a degradation and damnation.”

In 1910 Crowley became involved in O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis), and soon after the prominent leader. According tot the O.T.O. the secret of sexual magic is in fact “the key to all Masonic and Hermetic secrets, which explains all the riddles of nature and the symbolism of all religious systems. 

“I would suggest that Crowley’s sexual magic is a striking illustration of what Georges Bataille calls the power of transgression, which is a central aspect of eroticism, religious ritual and mystical experience alike. As Bataille suggests, transgression is not a matter of simple hedonism or unrestrained sexual license. Rather, it’s power lies in the dialectic or play between taboo and transgression, sanctity and sacrilege, through which one systematically constructs and then oversteps all laws. In estatic mystical experience or religious rites, one must first create an aura of purity before one can defile it with violence and the overturning of law.” (page 13/14)

Nowhere is this fundamental dialectic between taboo and transgression more apparent than in the case of Crowley. […] Croley made it his mission to burst the boundaries of conventional Christian morality in order to liberate the supreme freedom of the individual self: “The sense of shame is cowardly and servile. It is based on the ignorance that one is a start””. (page 14)