Collected Works of Aleister Crowley 1905-1907
Encyclopedia
The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley 1905-1907 was originally a trilogy of books published by the occultist, magician, and self-proclaimed prophet of Thelema
, Aleister Crowley
(1875-1947) during his early career as student of magick, and is now considered among his very numerous rarities.
. It is noted at the beginning:
CONTENTS
Most of these early works show little in the way of magic but are an introduction to Crowley's knowledge of religion and mythology. It's interesting to see how, after Crowley's first book White Stains
was banned and pulped, his consequent works of 1898 were quite mellow, almost gothic and Christian, with the first two hiding behind the pseudonym "A Gentlemen of the University of Cambridge" (no doubt after Percy Shelley's "A Gentlemen of the University of Oxford" for similar reasons). Aceldama, named after the place where Judas hanged himself ("the field of blood") is a philosophical lament that sees sin as the only abyss of life. The Tale of Archais is a dramatic love poem telling the story of Charicles and Archais, a girl condemned of turning into a snake. Charicles prays to his mother Aphrodite to change him into a beautiful girl to lure Zeus' love and make him vow to change into a mortal for him/her, this then so Archais can bite and finally kill Zeus to lift the curse. The allusions to adultery and the Christian God are obvious in this comedy.
After Songs of the Spirit the poems pick up Crowley's love of adulterous sex in the name of sin with the likes of "The Honourable Adulterers", "The Five Kisses" (both in Mysteries) and Jezebel and other Tragic Poems (in fact the word "tragedy" was added to these pieces, along with their own pseudonyms "A.E.C" and "Count Vladimir Svareff", again to protect Crowley's earley reputation. He knew in himself they were actually comedies)
The Temple of the Holy Ghost is a fusing of the poems in The Mother's Tragedy and other Poems and The Soul of Osiris: A History and now introduces Golden Dawn
allusions, Sanskrit yoga
terms, qabbalistic terms and Egyptian mythology
. It was this latter book that was reviewed by the British poet and writer G. K. Chesterton
quite polemically that lead to Crowley's early feud with him.
The last piece, Tanhäuser: A Story of all Time, ends Crowley's amateur stage and tells the legend of the Christian knight Tanhäuser, already expressed by Wagner. Crowley's source for the tale was probably the occult scholar Arthur Edward Waite
. Tanhäuser in the play leaves his Christian community and his childhood darling Elizabeth for the mysteries of Egypt and the God beyond time. Oddly Crowley once stated that this play contained the theory of special relativity
only Einstein usurped the phenomenon in 1905 by being more blatant.
from the intelligence Aiwass about this time. Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden and The Goetia were not included in this volume.
CONTENTS
The first work to appear in this volume, Oracles: the Autobiography of an Art, is like a little collected works in itself and contained Crowley's backlog of poems from 1889-1903, including an unfinished Buddhist classic the Dhammapada
, Charles Baudelaire
's Les Fleur du Mal (also unfinished) and some from Green Alps, his teenage collection of mountaineering poetry. Alice, an Adultery however is a sign of Crowley's maturing poetical skills (as well as again his love of adultery) and claims in the introduction to have been passed him in MS. form from the dying lover of "Alice" on his journeys in the East. It is written in the form of fifty sonnets numbered from the first day to the fiftieth and laments the poet's desire to make love with a married woman.
The Sword of Song was a major breakthrough for Crowley as it was the first to refer to himself as "The Beast" without any reticence as regards his critics, and the cover daringly had "Aleister Crowley = 666" written in Hebrew. It was basically a work based on Robert Browning
's Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day
and itself contained two long, likewise-colloquial poems called "Ascension Day" and "Pentacoste", both quite anarchic and unreadable because of the constant use of neologisms, disenjambment and punctuation, the poems really set way by means of hundreds of footnotes for collected prose witticisms in the back (even the line-numbering, going up naturally in five, cheekily missed "665" for "666"). The essays and poems in the back include "William Shakespeare", "Pansil", "After Agnosticism", "Preface to Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis
", "Summa Spes" and "The Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magick" (the introduction also to his edition of The Goetia).
The rest of this volume contains prose, almost avante garde, satire. Of no exception is Ambrossi Magi Hortus Rosarum claiming to be translated from a work by "Christeos Luciftias" and is similar to the fantasy attainments such as The Wake World and The Heart of the Master with the aspirant in alchemical fashion moving through the pictures of the Tarot cards. The Three Characteristics is a tongue-in-cheek take on what is known as a "jataka" story, or incarnation saga of Buddhism, but sounds more like the Book of Job
with Ganesh being tempted by Jehiour (really Iehi Aour, Allan Bennett) to inflict various karma on the reincarnating Per R Abu (Perdurabo, Crowley). These two works were originally appendices II and I respectively of The Sword of Song whilst Berashith and Science and Buddhism were its supplements and further philosophical works.
The Excluded Middle, or the Skeptic Refuted and Time are also philosophical satire and previously unpublished. They are both dialogues between "Mysticus" and "Skepticus" ("....Hindu Mystic and a British Skeptic....") and also breaks off into footnote essays actually bigger than the main context.
The final volume of Aleister Crowley's collected works have a flamboyancy of style which will be seen in the following period of his editorial The Equinox
. It collects his writings from 1904-1907. The contents appear less than the others only because the final work Orpheus was substantially long, taking up maybe 40% of the book.
CONTENTS
The Star and the Garter is a work that is similar to Alice, an Adultery, only this time the dilemma of the poet represents Crowley upon his wife discovering a prostitute's garter belt in his room, and Crowley, before their divorce, for the last time romanticising unbridled sex. Rosa Mundi was one of a trilogy of poems written for her (Rose Kelly) published under the pseudonym "H. D. Carr" after Katie Carr, the wife of French artist and sculptor Auguste Rodin
(1840-1917) whom supplied water-colouring to the editions' sleeves. His works were also honoured by Crowley in the following Rodin in Rime (Rosa Inferni itself appears in Gargoyles, whilst Rosa Coelli was published possibly after this volume in 1907).
The last work to appear was Crowley's Orpheus: a Lyrical Legend and was meant to be his crowning work as a poet. As he points out in the introduction, not only was Crowley unhappy with the final product, its lengthy and uninspired creation from as far back as 1902 (uncommon in Crowley who was turbulent in his creative output) was also badly received from friends. But many would agree the pæan style in which Crowley glorifies these mythological characters was pertinent to his career as a conjuror of gods, and the many complicated rhyme schemes were if anything a signpost of the incantatory style of Crowley that is now stereotyped in witchcraft.
The chapters are
TO OSCAR ECKENSTEIN, with whom I have wondered in so many solitudes of nature, and thereby learnt the words and spells that bind her children
TO MARY BEATON, whom I lament
TO THE MEMORY OF IEHI AOUR, with whom I walked through Hell, and compelled it
TO MY WIFE
Thelema
Thelema is a religious philosophy that was established, defined and developed by the early 20th century British writer and ceremonial magician, Aleister Crowley. He believed himself to be the prophet of a new age, the Æon of Horus, based upon a religious experience that he had in Egypt in 1904...
, Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
(1875-1947) during his early career as student of magick, and is now considered among his very numerous rarities.
Collected Works volume I 1905
The first volume was published in 1905 but contains his poems and plays between 1898 and 1902 and is what he admits to be his juveniliaJuvenilia
Juvenilia is a term applied to literary, musical or artistic works produced by an author during his or her youth. The term often has a retrospective sense. For example, written juvenilia, if published at all, usually appear some time after the author has become well-known for later works.The term...
. It is noted at the beginning:
The great bulk of MSS. from 1887 to 1897 have been sedulously sought out and destroyed. They were very voluminous.
CONTENTS
| Page | Title | Type | Year | Read online |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aceldama | poem | 1898 | - |
| 7 | The Tale of Archais | dramatic poem | 1898 | - |
| 29 | Songs of the Spirit | poems | 1898 | - |
| 57 | The Poem | play | 1898 | - |
| 64 | Jephtah | play | 1899 | - |
| 90 | Mysteries | poems | 1898 | - |
| 129 | Jezebal and other Tragic Poems | poems | 1899 | - |
| 136 | An Appeal to the American Republic | poem | 1899 | - |
| 141 | The Fatal Force | play | 1899 | - |
| 154 | The Mother's Tragedy | play | 1899 | - |
| 166 | The Temple of the Holy Ghost | poems | 1900 | - |
| 214 | Carmen Saeculare | poem | 1901 | - |
| 222 | Tanhäuser | play | 1902 | - |
| 263 | Death in Thessaly | epilogue | - | - |
| 265 | Qabalistic Dogma | appendix | - | in http://www.the-equinox.org/vol1/no5/eqi05007.html |
Most of these early works show little in the way of magic but are an introduction to Crowley's knowledge of religion and mythology. It's interesting to see how, after Crowley's first book White Stains
White Stains
White Stains is a poetic work written by English author and occultist Aleister Crowley under the pseudonym "George Archibald Bishop". It was published in 1898 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands....
was banned and pulped, his consequent works of 1898 were quite mellow, almost gothic and Christian, with the first two hiding behind the pseudonym "A Gentlemen of the University of Cambridge" (no doubt after Percy Shelley's "A Gentlemen of the University of Oxford" for similar reasons). Aceldama, named after the place where Judas hanged himself ("the field of blood") is a philosophical lament that sees sin as the only abyss of life. The Tale of Archais is a dramatic love poem telling the story of Charicles and Archais, a girl condemned of turning into a snake. Charicles prays to his mother Aphrodite to change him into a beautiful girl to lure Zeus' love and make him vow to change into a mortal for him/her, this then so Archais can bite and finally kill Zeus to lift the curse. The allusions to adultery and the Christian God are obvious in this comedy.
After Songs of the Spirit the poems pick up Crowley's love of adulterous sex in the name of sin with the likes of "The Honourable Adulterers", "The Five Kisses" (both in Mysteries) and Jezebel and other Tragic Poems (in fact the word "tragedy" was added to these pieces, along with their own pseudonyms "A.E.C" and "Count Vladimir Svareff", again to protect Crowley's earley reputation. He knew in himself they were actually comedies)
The Temple of the Holy Ghost is a fusing of the poems in The Mother's Tragedy and other Poems and The Soul of Osiris: A History and now introduces Golden Dawn
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was a magical order active in Great Britain during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which practiced theurgy and spiritual development...
allusions, Sanskrit yoga
Yoga
Yoga is a physical, mental, and spiritual discipline, originating in ancient India. The goal of yoga, or of the person practicing yoga, is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on Supersoul...
terms, qabbalistic terms and Egyptian mythology
Egyptian mythology
Ancient Egyptian religion was a complex system of polytheistic beliefs and rituals which were an integral part of ancient Egyptian society. It centered on the Egyptians' interaction with a multitude of deities who were believed to be present in, and in control of, the forces and elements of nature...
. It was this latter book that was reviewed by the British poet and writer G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....
quite polemically that lead to Crowley's early feud with him.
The last piece, Tanhäuser: A Story of all Time, ends Crowley's amateur stage and tells the legend of the Christian knight Tanhäuser, already expressed by Wagner. Crowley's source for the tale was probably the occult scholar Arthur Edward Waite
Arthur Edward Waite
Arthur Edward Waite was a scholarly mystic who wrote extensively on occult and esoteric matters, and was the co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck. As his biographer, R.A...
. Tanhäuser in the play leaves his Christian community and his childhood darling Elizabeth for the mysteries of Egypt and the God beyond time. Oddly Crowley once stated that this play contained the theory of special relativity
Special relativity
Special relativity is the physical theory of measurement in an inertial frame of reference proposed in 1905 by Albert Einstein in the paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies".It generalizes Galileo's...
only Einstein usurped the phenomenon in 1905 by being more blatant.
Collected Works volume II 1906
The second volume showed Crowley's maturing poetry and plays of 1902-1904, with the second half of this book breaking into many prose works based on his new-found interest in nineteenth-century philosophy and Buddhism; keeping in mind that Crowley received The Book of the LawThe Book of the Law
Liber AL vel Legis is the central sacred text of Thelema, written by Aleister Crowley in Cairo, Egypt in the year 1904. Its full title is Liber AL vel Legis, sub figura CCXX, as delivered by XCIII=418 to DCLXVI, and it is commonly referred to as The Book of the Law.Liber AL vel Legis contains three...
from the intelligence Aiwass about this time. Snowdrops from a Curate's Garden and The Goetia were not included in this volume.
CONTENTS
| Page | Title | Type | Year | Read online |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oracles | poems | 1905 | - |
| 58 | Alice, an Adultery | dramatic poems | 1903 | - |
| 86 | The Argonauts | play | 1904 | |
| 121 | Ahab and other Poems | poems | 1903 | - |
| 130 | The God-Eater | play | 1903 | - |
| 140 | The Sword of Swong | concept poem | 1904 | - |
| 212 | Ambrosii Magi Hortus Rosarum | satire | 1902 | - |
| 225 | The Three Characteristics | satire | 1902 | - |
| 233 | Berashith | essay | 1902 | - |
| 244 | Science and Buddhism | essay | 1902 | - |
| 262 | The Excluded Middle | essay | 1902 | - |
| 267 | Time | essay | 1902 | - |
| 283 | - | epilogue | - |
The first work to appear in this volume, Oracles: the Autobiography of an Art, is like a little collected works in itself and contained Crowley's backlog of poems from 1889-1903, including an unfinished Buddhist classic the Dhammapada
Dhammapada
The Dhammapada is a versified Buddhist scripture traditionally ascribed to the Buddha himself. It is one of the best-known texts from the Theravada canon....
, Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
's Les Fleur du Mal (also unfinished) and some from Green Alps, his teenage collection of mountaineering poetry. Alice, an Adultery however is a sign of Crowley's maturing poetical skills (as well as again his love of adultery) and claims in the introduction to have been passed him in MS. form from the dying lover of "Alice" on his journeys in the East. It is written in the form of fifty sonnets numbered from the first day to the fiftieth and laments the poet's desire to make love with a married woman.
The Sword of Song was a major breakthrough for Crowley as it was the first to refer to himself as "The Beast" without any reticence as regards his critics, and the cover daringly had "Aleister Crowley = 666" written in Hebrew. It was basically a work based on Robert Browning
Robert Browning
Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...
's Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day
Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day
Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day, a Poem is, despite the title, often treated as two poems by Robert Browning, rather than as one poem in two parts. It was the first new work published by Robert Browning after his marriage to Elizabeth Barrett Browning and their departure for Italy, and is widely...
and itself contained two long, likewise-colloquial poems called "Ascension Day" and "Pentacoste", both quite anarchic and unreadable because of the constant use of neologisms, disenjambment and punctuation, the poems really set way by means of hundreds of footnotes for collected prose witticisms in the back (even the line-numbering, going up naturally in five, cheekily missed "665" for "666"). The essays and poems in the back include "William Shakespeare", "Pansil", "After Agnosticism", "Preface to Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis
Psychopathia Sexualis
Psychopathia Sexualis may refer to:* Psychopathia Sexualis, an 1886 book about human sexuality by Richard von Krafft-Ebing* Psychopathia Sexualis , an 1843 moral psychology book about human sexuality by Heinrich Kaan...
", "Summa Spes" and "The Initiated Interpretation of Ceremonial Magick" (the introduction also to his edition of The Goetia).
The rest of this volume contains prose, almost avante garde, satire. Of no exception is Ambrossi Magi Hortus Rosarum claiming to be translated from a work by "Christeos Luciftias" and is similar to the fantasy attainments such as The Wake World and The Heart of the Master with the aspirant in alchemical fashion moving through the pictures of the Tarot cards. The Three Characteristics is a tongue-in-cheek take on what is known as a "jataka" story, or incarnation saga of Buddhism, but sounds more like the Book of Job
Book of Job
The Book of Job , commonly referred to simply as Job, is one of the books of the Hebrew Bible. It relates the story of Job, his trials at the hands of Satan, his discussions with friends on the origins and nature of his suffering, his challenge to God, and finally a response from God. The book is a...
with Ganesh being tempted by Jehiour (really Iehi Aour, Allan Bennett) to inflict various karma on the reincarnating Per R Abu (Perdurabo, Crowley). These two works were originally appendices II and I respectively of The Sword of Song whilst Berashith and Science and Buddhism were its supplements and further philosophical works.
The Excluded Middle, or the Skeptic Refuted and Time are also philosophical satire and previously unpublished. They are both dialogues between "Mysticus" and "Skepticus" ("....Hindu Mystic and a British Skeptic....") and also breaks off into footnote essays actually bigger than the main context.
Collected Works volume III 1907
CONTENTSThe final volume of Aleister Crowley's collected works have a flamboyancy of style which will be seen in the following period of his editorial The Equinox
The Equinox
The Equinox is a series of publications in book form that serves as the official organ of the A.'.A.'., a magical order founded by Aleister Crowley...
. It collects his writings from 1904-1907. The contents appear less than the others only because the final work Orpheus was substantially long, taking up maybe 40% of the book.
CONTENTS
| Page | Title | Type | Year | Read online |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Star and the Garter | concept poems | 1904 | - |
| 20 | Why Jesus Wept | play | 1905 | - |
| 51 | Rosa Mundi and other Love Songs | poems | 1905 | - |
| 68 | The Sire de Malétroit's Door | play | 1906 | - |
| 84 | Gargoyles | poems | 1906 | - |
| 109 | Rodin in Rime | poems | 1907 | - |
| 126 | Orpheus | concept poems | 1905 | - |
| 219 | - | epilogue of I, II, III | - | - |
| 233 | (bibliographical note) | appendix A | - | - |
| 240 | (index of first lines) | appendix B | - | - |
The Star and the Garter is a work that is similar to Alice, an Adultery, only this time the dilemma of the poet represents Crowley upon his wife discovering a prostitute's garter belt in his room, and Crowley, before their divorce, for the last time romanticising unbridled sex. Rosa Mundi was one of a trilogy of poems written for her (Rose Kelly) published under the pseudonym "H. D. Carr" after Katie Carr, the wife of French artist and sculptor Auguste Rodin
Auguste Rodin
François-Auguste-René Rodin , known as Auguste Rodin , was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past...
(1840-1917) whom supplied water-colouring to the editions' sleeves. His works were also honoured by Crowley in the following Rodin in Rime (Rosa Inferni itself appears in Gargoyles, whilst Rosa Coelli was published possibly after this volume in 1907).
The last work to appear was Crowley's Orpheus: a Lyrical Legend and was meant to be his crowning work as a poet. As he points out in the introduction, not only was Crowley unhappy with the final product, its lengthy and uninspired creation from as far back as 1902 (uncommon in Crowley who was turbulent in his creative output) was also badly received from friends. But many would agree the pæan style in which Crowley glorifies these mythological characters was pertinent to his career as a conjuror of gods, and the many complicated rhyme schemes were if anything a signpost of the incantatory style of Crowley that is now stereotyped in witchcraft.
The chapters are
- LIBER PRIMUS VEL CARMINUM (Orpheus' tuning his lyre to antistrophe of various "elemental forces")
TO OSCAR ECKENSTEIN, with whom I have wondered in so many solitudes of nature, and thereby learnt the words and spells that bind her children
- LIBER SECUNDUS VEL AMORIS (Orpheus laments Eurydice's death)
TO MARY BEATON, whom I lament
- LIBER TERTIUS VEL LABORIS (Orpheus travels to Hades)
TO THE MEMORY OF IEHI AOUR, with whom I walked through Hell, and compelled it
- LIBER QUARTUS VEL MORTIS (Orpheus on Mt. Ida with the Mænads)
TO MY WIFE
Editions
- The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley 3 vols. 1905-1907, Foyer, UK: S. P. R. T.
- The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley 1 vol, "traveller's ed.", 1907, Foyer, UK: S. P. R. T
- The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley reprint, 3 vols. 1974, Des Plaines, IL: Yogi Publication Society, ISBN 0-911662-51-0, ISBN 0-911662-52-9, ISBN 0-911662-53-7
See also
- Libri of Aleister CrowleyLibri of Aleister CrowleyThe Libri of Aleister Crowley is a list of texts mostly written or adapted by Aleister Crowley. Some are attributed to other authors. The list was intended for students of Crowley's magical order, the A∴A∴....
- Works of Aleister CrowleyWorks of Aleister CrowleyAleister Crowley —mystic, occultist, and mountaineer—was a highly prolific writer, not only on the topic of Thelema and magick, but on philosophy, politics, and culture. He was also a published poet and playwright and left behind a large number of personal letters and daily journal entries...
- The Stratagem and other StoriesThe Stratagem and other Stories"The Stratagem and other Stories" was a small book of short stories written by Aleister Crowley , occult magician, poet and self-proclaimed prophet of a new Æon.- Contents :...
- Clouds without WaterClouds without WaterClouds without Water is a poetry collection by Aleister Crowley , an English author, occult magician, mountaineer and founder of the religious philosophy of Thelema. Clouds without Water was one of many of Crowley's eccentric works published in his lifetime and was first seen in 1909...
External links
- The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley 1905-1907 full text of the book