Aleister Crowley Quotes & Sayings

Her cheeks were bright with a soft vermilion of the pomegranate mingling with the whiteness of the lily. — Aleister Crowley

The man who denounces life merely defines himself as the man who is unequal to it. — Aleister Crowley

This Universe is a wild revel of atoms, men, and stars, each one a Soul of Light and Mirth, horsed on Eternity. — Aleister Crowley

All questions of the Law are to be decided only by appeal to my writings, each for himself — Aleister Crowley

And allow me again to assure you that when you've got yourself going, doing your True Will, you won't find you have any time to get bored. — Aleister Crowley

Look not so deeply into words and letters; for this Mystery hath been hidden by the Alchemists. Compose the sevenfold into a fourfold regimen; and when thou hast understood thou mayest make symbols; but by playing child's games with symbols thou shalt never understand. — Aleister Crowley

Genuine recollections almost invariably explain oneself to oneself. Suppose, for example, that you feel an instinctive aversion to some particular kind of wine. Try as you will, you can find no reason for it. Suppose when you explore a previous incarnation, you remember you died by a poisoned administered in a wine of that kind, your aversion is explained by the proverb: 'A burnt child dreads the fire.' — Aleister Crowley

There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt. — Aleister Crowley

In every Magical, or similar system, it is invariably the first condition which the Aspirant must fulfill: he must once and for all and for ever put his family outside his magical circle.
Even the Gospels insist clearly and weightily on this.
Christ himself (i.e. whoever is meant by this name in this passage) callously disowns his mother and his brethren (Luke VIII, 19). And he repeatedly makes discipleship contingent on the total renunciation of all family ties. He would not even allow a man to attend his father's funeral!
Is the magical tradition less rigid?
Not on your life! — Aleister Crowley

He is in me, and I in Him! Mine is the crystal radiance That filleth aether to the brim Wherein all stars and suns may dance. I am the beautiful and glad, Rejoicing in the golden day. — Aleister Crowley

People think that talking is a sign of thinking. It isn't, for the most part' on the contrary, it's a mechanical dodge of the body to relieve oneself of the strain of thinking, just as exercising the muscles helps the body to become temporarily unconscious of its weight, its pain, its weariness, and the foreknowledge of its doom. — Aleister Crowley

There is no part of me that is not of the Gods. — Aleister Crowley

To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter. — Aleister Crowley

The key of joy is disobedience. — Aleister Crowley

Sanity is a compromise. — Aleister Crowley

The intention of this Book of The Law is perfectly simple. Whatever your sexual predilections may be, you are free, by the Law of Thelema, to the the star you are, to go your own way rejoicing. — Aleister Crowley

But neither Europe nor Africa can show any such desolation as America. The proudest, stubbornest, bitterest peasant of deserted Spain, the most primitive and superstitious Arab of the remotest oases, are a little more than kin and never less than kind at their worst; whereas in the United States one is almost always conscious of an instinctive lack of sympathy and understanding with even the most charming and cultured people. — Aleister Crowley

The Gods are but names for the forces of Nature themselves. — Aleister Crowley

Love in a night shall live and die,
Love in a day shall wing and fly;
Love in the Spring shall last an hour,
Easily fade a spring-tide flower. — Aleister Crowley

The Victrola, the Movies, a lecture: such are the three American alternatives to Silence, Scandal and Squabble.
Or else, get drunk. America knows no other devices to enable its inhabitants to endure either their own company or that of their fellow-creatures. — Aleister Crowley

And this is the mystery that I declare unto thee: that from the Crown itself spring the three great delusions; Aleph is madness, and Beth is falsehood, and Gimel is glamour.
- The Cry of the 3rd Aethyr Which Is Called ZON — Aleister Crowley

We [of Thelema] are whole-hearted extroverts; the penalty of restricting oneself is anything from neurosis to down right lunacy; in particular, melancholia. — Aleister Crowley

I do not think we were afraid of death; life had become such an infinitely boring alternation between a period of stimulation which failed to stimulate and of depression which hardly even depressed. — Aleister Crowley

The proper formation and consecration of the Eucharist requires careful attention. The Objects of the Working must be chosen systematically. My own Record has all the faults of pioneer work: it contains much to avoid. There must be proper tabulation of the Experiments, and strictly scientific observation. Sentimentality, sexual or spiritual, must be sternly suppressed. Compliance with these conventions should assure a success far greater than I have myself attained. — Aleister Crowley

Sex is, directly or indirectly, the most powerful weapon in the armoury of the Magician; and precisely because there is no moral guide, it is indescribably dangerous. I have given a great many hints, especially in Magick , and The Book of Thoth - some of the cards are almost blatantly revealing; so I have been rapped rather severely over the knuckles for giving children matches for playthings. My excuse has been that they have already got the matches, that my explanations have been directed to add conscious precautions to the existing automatic safeguards. — Aleister Crowley

I thought I would stand myself a little dinner. I hadn't quite enough sense to know that what I really wanted was human companions. There aren't such things. Every man is eternally alone. But when you get mixed up with a fairly decent crowd, you forget that appalling fact for long enough to give your brain time to recover from the acute symptoms of its disease - that of thinking. — Aleister Crowley

Man has the right ... to play as he will ... to think what he will: to speak what he will: to write what he will: to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will: to dress as he will. — Aleister Crowley

I cling unto the burning Aethyr like Lucifer that fell through the Abyss, and by the fury of his flight kindled the air.
And I am Belial, for having seen the Rose upon thy breast, I have denied God.
And I am Satan! I am Satan! I am cast out upon a burning crag! And the sea boils about the desolation thereof. And already the vultures gather, and feast upon my flesh. — Aleister Crowley

To resist and subdue Nature is to make for one's self a personal and imperishable life: it is to break free from the vicissitudes of Life and Death. — Aleister Crowley

The increase of knowledge has forced
the thinker to specialise, with the result that there is nobody capable to deal with civilisation as a whole. We are playing a game of chess in which nobody can see more than two or three squares at once, and so it has become impossible to form a coherent plan. — Aleister Crowley

A burnt child dreads the fire. — Aleister Crowley

I've written this to keep from crying. But I am crying, only the tears won't come. — Aleister Crowley

There is beauty in every incident of life; the true and the false, the wise and the foolish, are all one in the eye that beholds all without passion or prejudice: and the secret appears to lie not in the retirement from the world, but in keeping a part of oneself Vestal, sacred, intact, aloof from that self which makes contact with the external universe. In other words, in a separation of that which is and perceives from that which acts and suffers. And the art of doing this is really the art of being an artist. As a rule, it is a birthright; it may perhaps be attained by prayer and fasting; most surely, it can never be bought. — Aleister Crowley

The average man cannot believe that an artist may be as serious and highminded an observer of life as the professed man of science. — Aleister Crowley

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. — Aleister Crowley

If one had to worry about one's actions in respect of other people's ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or married to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon. — Aleister Crowley

There is a single main definition of the object of all magical Ritual. It is the uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm. The Supreme and Complete Ritual is therefore the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; or, in the language of Mysticism, Union with God. — Aleister Crowley

The first condition of success in magick is purity of purpose. — Aleister Crowley

I believe in one Gnostic and Catholic Church of Light, Life, Love and Liberty, the Word of whose Law is THELEMA . — Aleister Crowley

Sleep I forget. Her silky breath no longer fans my ears; I dream I float on some forgotten stream that hath a saviour still of death, — Aleister Crowley

Magick is the Science of understanding oneself and one's conditions. It is the Art of applying that understanding in action. — Aleister Crowley

It is only necessary to destroy in oneself the roots of those motives which determine a man's course, in order to enjoy the omnipotence and immunity of a god. — Aleister Crowley

Paganism is wholesome because it faces the facts of life ... — Aleister Crowley

This serpent, SATAN, is not the enemy of Man, but He who made Gods of our race, knowing Good and Evil; He bade 'Know Thyself!' and taught Initiation. — Aleister Crowley

The pious pretense that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing. — Aleister Crowley

The few love affairs which had come my way had been rather silly and sordid. They had not revealed the possibilities of love; in fact I had thought it a somewhat overrated pleasure, a brief and brutal blindness with boredom and disgust hard on its heels. — Aleister Crowley

I am only sipping the second glass of that "fascinating, but subtle poison, whose ravages eat men's heart and brain" that I have ever tasted in my life; and as I am not an American anxious for quick action, I am not surprised and disappointed that I do not drop dead upon the spot. But I can taste souls without the aid of absinthe; and besides, this is magic of absinthe! The spirit of the house has entered into it; it is an elixir, the masterpiece of an old alchemist, no common wine. And so, as I talk with the patron concerning the vanity of things, I perceive the secret of the heart of God himself; this, that everything, even the vilest thing, is so unutterably lovely that it is worthy of the devotion of a God for all eternity. What other excuse could He give man for making him? In substance, that is my answer to King Solomon. — Aleister Crowley

Intolerance is evidence of impotence. — Aleister Crowley

To me, every dirty act was simply a sacrament of sin, a passionately religious protest against Christianity, which was for me the symbol of all vileness, meanness, treachery, falsehood and oppression. — Aleister Crowley

Bind nothing! Let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing; for thereby there cometh hurt — Aleister Crowley

40. My adepts stand upright; their head above the heavens, their feet below the hells.
41. But since one is naturally attracted to the Angel, another to the Demon, let the first strengthen the lower link, the last attach more firmly to the higher. — Aleister Crowley

All phenomena of which we are aware take place in our own minds, and therefore the only thing we have to look at is the mind; which is a more constant quantity over all the species of humanity than is generally supposed. — Aleister Crowley

Repeal all laws which assume that mankind is a herd of cattle — Aleister Crowley

Astrology has no more useful function than this, to discover the inmost nature of a man and to bring it out into his consciousness, that he may fulfil it according to the law of light. — Aleister Crowley

All this talk about 'suffering humanity' is principally drivel based on the error of transferring one's own psychology to one's neighbour. The Golden Rule is silly. If Lord Alfred Douglas (for example) did to others what he would like them to do to him, many would resent his action. — Aleister Crowley

Toronto as a city carries out the idea of Canada as a country. It is a calculated crime against the aspirations of the soul and the affection of the heart. — Aleister Crowley

The Holy Guardian Angel is the spiritual Sun of the Soul of the Adept. — Aleister Crowley

30. If Will stops and cries Why, invoking Because, then Will stops & does nought.
31. If Power asks why, then is Power weakness. — Aleister Crowley

Those magicians who object to the use of blood, have endeavored to replace it with incense. But, the bloody sacrifice, though more dangerous, is more efficacious. And for nearly all purposes, human sacrifice is the best. — Aleister Crowley

It is necessary that we stop, once for all, this ignorant meddling with other people's business. Each individual must be left free to follow his own path. — Aleister Crowley

This time I saw. In a blue heaven was coiled an infinite snake of gold and green, with four eyes of fire, black fire and red, that darted rays in every direction; held within its coils was a great multitude of laughing children. And even as I looked, all this was blotted out. Crawling rivers of blood spread over the heaven, of blood purulent with nameless forms - mangy dogs with their bowels dragging behind them; creatures half elephant, half beetle; things that were but a ghastly bloodshot eye, set about with leathery tentacles; women whose skins heaved and bubbled like boiling sulphur, giving off clouds that condensed into a thousand other shapes, more hideous than their mother; these were the least of the denizens of these hateful rivers. — Aleister Crowley

It seemed to her as if her body were altogether too heavy for her; she had the feeling so well known to opium- smokers, which they call "clou'e 'a terre." It is as if the body clung desperately to the earth, by its own weight, and yet in the same way as a tired child nestles to its mother's breast. In this sensation there is a perfect lassitude mingled with a perfect longing. It may be that it is the counterpart of the freedom of the soul of which it is the herald and companion. — Aleister Crowley

The joy of life consists in the exercise of one's energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal. — Aleister Crowley

I will interpret every phenomenon as a particular dealing of God with my soul — Aleister Crowley

There are no "standards of Right". Ethics is balderdash. Each Star must go on its own orbit. To hell with "moral principle"; there is no such thing. — Aleister Crowley

This formula of Love is universal; all the laws of Nature are its servitors. Thus, gravitation, chemical affinity, electrical potential, and the rest - and these are alike mere aspects of the general law - are so many differently-observed statements of the unique tendency. — Aleister Crowley

Imagine listening to Beethoven with the prepossession that C is a good note and F a bad one; yet this is exactly the stand point from which all uninitiates contemplate the universe. Obviously, they miss the music. — Aleister Crowley

On the Path of the Wise there is probably no danger more deadly, no poison more pernicious, no seduction more subtle than Spiritual Pride; it strikes, being solar, at the very heart of the Aspirant; more, it is an inflation and exacerbation of the Ego, so that its victim runs the peril of straying into a Black Lodge, and finding himself at home there. — Aleister Crowley

The Sorcerer may be - indeed he usually is - a thwarted disappointed man whose aims are perfectly natural. Often enough, his real trouble is ignorance; and by the time he has become fairly hot stuff as a Black Magician, he has learnt that he is getting nowhere, and finds himself, despite himself, on the True Path of the Wise. — Aleister Crowley

Crime, folly, sickness and all phenomena must be contemplated with complete freedom from fear aversion or shame. Otherwise we shall fail to see accurately, and interpret intelligently; in which case we shall be unable to outwit and outfight them. — Aleister Crowley

Lisa was thinking, as she climbed the apparently unending staircase, the she had taken pretty long odds. She had not hesitated to buck the Tiger, Life. Simon Iff had warned her that she was acting on impulse. But
on the top of that
he had merely urged her to be true to it. She swore once more that she would stick to her guns. The black mood fell from her. She turned and looked upon the sea, now far below. The sun, a hollow orb of molten glory, hung quivering in the mist of the Mediterranean; and Lisa entered for a moment into a perfect peace of spirit. She became once with Nature, instead of a being eternally at war with it. — Aleister Crowley

We can no longer assert any single proposition, unless we guard ourselves by enumerating countless conditions which must be assumed. — Aleister Crowley

Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people. — Aleister Crowley

The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka. — Aleister Crowley

The so-called poet with his vague dreams and ideals is indeed no better than a harmless lunatic; the true poet is the worker, who grips life's throat and wrings out its secret, who selects austerely and composes concisely, whose work is as true and clean as razor-steel, albeit its sweep is vaster and swifter than the sun's! — Aleister Crowley

There is only one really safe, mild, harmless beverage and you can drink as much of that as you like without running the slightest risk, and what you say when you want it is, Garcon! Un Pernod! — Aleister Crowley

It is thinkable to think that A is not-A; to reverse this is but to revert to the normal. Yet by forcing the brain to accept propositions of which one set is absurdity, the other truism, a new function of the brain is established. Vague and mysterious and all indefinite are the contents of this new consciousness; yet they are somehow vital. Unreason becomes experience. This lifts the leaden-footed Soul to the Experience of THAT of which Reason is the blasphemy. But without that Experience these words are the Lies of a Looby. — Aleister Crowley

A red rose absorbs all colors but red; red is therefore the one color that it is not. — Aleister Crowley

We must conquer life by living it to the full, and then we can go to meet death with a certain prestige. — Aleister Crowley

The Devil' is, historically, the God of any people that one personally dislikes ... This serpent, SATAN, is not the enemy of Man, but He who made Gods of our race, knowing Good and Evil; He bade 'Know Thyself!' and taught Initiation. He is 'The Devil' of the Book of Thoth, and His emblem is BAPHOMET, the Androgyne who is the hieroglyph of arcane perfection ... He is therefore Life, and Love. — Aleister Crowley

I'm a poet, and I like my lies the way my mother used to make them. — Aleister Crowley

There are hardly half a dozen writers in England today who have not sold out to the enemy. Even when their good work has been a success, Mammon grips them and whispers: More money for more work. — Aleister Crowley

I, too, was walking on air. Lou turned, her mouth a scarlet orb, as I have seen the sunset over Belgium, over the crinked line of shore, over the dim blue mystic curve of sea and sky; with the thought in my mind beating in tune with my excited heart. We didn't miss the arsenal this time. I was the arsenal too. I had exploded. I was the slayer and the slain! And there sailed Lou across the sky to meet me. — Aleister Crowley

Part of the public horror of sexual irregularity so-called is due to the fact that everyone knows himself essentially guilty. — Aleister Crowley

I hardly ever talk- words seem such a waste, and they are none of them true. No one has yet invented a language from my point of view. — Aleister Crowley

It is necessary, in this world, to be made of harder stuff than one's environment. — Aleister Crowley

The Great Work is the uniting of opposites. It may mean the uniting of
the soul with God, of the microcosm with the macrocosm, of the female
with the male, of the ego with the non-ego - or what not. — Aleister Crowley

There is no grace: there is no guilt: This is the Law: DO WHAT THOU WILT! — Aleister Crowley

Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains. — Aleister Crowley

The Quest of the Holy Grail, the Search for the Stone of the Philosophers - by whatever name we choose to call the Great Work - is therefore endless. Success only opens up new avenues of brilliant possibility. Yea, verily, and Amen! the task is tireless and its joys without bounds; for the whole Universe, and all that in it is, what is it but the infinite playground of the Crowned and Conquering Child, of the insatiable, the innocent, the ever-rejoicing Heir of Space and Eternity, whose name is MAN? — Aleister Crowley

Religion itself becomes offensively monotonous. On every point of vantage are pagodas
stupid stalagmites of stagnant piety. — Aleister Crowley

The sot drinks, and is drunken: the coward drinks not, and shivers: the wise man, brave and free, drinks, and gives glory to the Most High God. — Aleister Crowley

When we've all finished talking, there's something that never utters a word, but goes right down through the earth, plumb to the centre. — Aleister Crowley

They made figures of brass, and tried to induce souls to indwell them. In some accounts we read that they succeeded; Friar Bacon was credited with one such Homunculus; so was Albertus Magnus, and, I think, Paracelsus. He had, at least, a devil in his long sword 'which taught him all the cunning pranks of past and future mountebanks, — Aleister Crowley

The word of Sin is Restriction — Aleister Crowley

Chinese civilisation is so systematic that wild animals have been abolished on principle. — Aleister Crowley

When you have proved that God is merely a name for the sex instinct, it appears to me not far to the perception that the sex instinct is God."
-Review of Ida Craddock's "Heavenly Bridegrooms — Aleister Crowley

Magic is real. And reality ... it is magical. — Aleister Crowley

What is the meaning of Initiation? It is the Path to the realisation of your Self as the sole, the supreme, the absolute of all Truth, Beauty, Purity, Perfection! — Aleister Crowley

All this is true and false; and it is true and false to say that it is true and false. — Aleister Crowley