Aleister Quotes & Sayings

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

For I am divided for love's sake, for the chance of union. — Aleister Crowley

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

Anything which throws light upon the Universe, anything which reveals us to ourselves, should be welcome in this world of riddles. — 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

I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff. — Aleister Crowley

A white male child of perfect innocence and intelligence makes the most suitable victim. — Aleister Crowley

To the eyes of a god, mankind must appear as a species of bacteria which multiply and become progressively virulent whenever they find themselves in a congenial culture, and whose activity diminishes until they disappear completely as soon as proper measures are taken to sterilize them. — Aleister Crowley

The Universe is the Practical Joke of the General
at the expense of the Particular, quoth FRATER
PERDURABO, and laughed.
But those disciples nearest to him wept, seeing the
Universal Sorrow.
Those next to them laughed, seeing the Universal Joke.
Below these certain disciples wept,
Then certain laughed.
Others next wept.
Others next laughed.
Next others wept.
Next others laughed.
Last came those that wept because they could not
see the Joke, and those that laughed lest they
should be thought not to see the Joke, and thought
it safe to act like FRATER PERDURABO.
But though FRATER PERDURABO laughed
openly, He also at the same time wept secretly;
and in Himself He neither laughed nor wept.
Nor did He mean what He said. — Aleister Crowley

Until you've got your mouth full of cocaine, you don't know what kissing is. One kiss goes on from phase to phase like one of those novels by Balzac and Zola and Romain Rolland and D. H. Lawrence and those chaps. And you never get tire. You're on fourth speed all the time, and the engine purrs like a kitten, a big white kitten with the stars in its whiskers. — Aleister Crowley

May the New Year bring you courage to break your resolutions early! My own plan is to swear off every kind of virtue, so that I triumph even when I fall! — 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

I am certainly of opinion that genius can be acquired, or, in the alternative, that it is an almost universal possession. — 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

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

Have you seen the sand-roses of the Sahara? Such is the violence of the Khamsin that it whips grains of sand together, presses them, finally builds them into great blocks, big enough and solid enough to be used for walls in the oasis. And beautiful! Whew! For all that, they are not real rocks. Leave hem in peace, with no possible interference - what happens? (I brought some home, and put them "in safety" as curiosities, and as useful psychometrical tests.) Alas! Time is enough. Go to the drawer which held them; nothing remains but little piles of dust. — Aleister Crowley

The greatest, like Rembrandt, paint a gallant, a hag, and a carcass with equal passion and rapture; they love the truth as it is. They do not admit that anything can be ugly or evil; its existence justifies itself. This is because they know themselves to be part of an harmonious unity; to disdain any item of it would be to blaspheme the whole. The Thelemite is able to revel in any experience soever; in each he recognizes the tokens of ultimate Truth. It is surely obvious, even intellectually, that all phenomena are interdependent, and therefore involve each other. — Aleister Crowley

The ordinary man looking at a mountain is like an illiterate person confronted with a Greek manuscript. — 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 was asked to memorise what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner. — 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 Way of Mastery is to break all the rules - but you have to know them perfectly before you can do this; otherwise you are not in a position to transcend them. — Aleister Crowley

One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously; but to take it seriously one must be already mad. — Aleister Crowley

Destiny is an absolutely definite and inexorable ruler. Physical ability and moral determination count for nothing. It is impossible to perform the simplest act when the gods say no. I have no idea how they bring pressure to bear on such occasions; I only know that it is irresistible. — 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

I've often thought that there isn't any "I" at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think we are ourselves, we are simply the victims of a delusion. — Aleister Crowley

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

For true Magick means "to employ one set of natural forces at a mechanical advantage as against another set" - I quote, as closely as memory serves, Thomas Henry Huxley, when he explains that when he lifts his water-jug - or his elbow - he does not "defy the Law of Gravitation." On the contrary, he uses that Law; its equations form part of the system by which he lifts the jug without spilling the water. — Aleister Crowley

Oh, how superior is the Eye of Horus to the Mouth of Isis! — Aleister Crowley

Further, an excess of legislation defeats its own ends. It makes the whole population criminals, and turns them all into police and police spies. The moral health of such a people is ruined for ever; only revolution can save it. — 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

The technical developments of almost every form of wealth [e.g., oil, minerals] are the forebears of Big Business; and Big Business, directly or indirectly, is the immediate cause of War. — Aleister Crowley

A man friends are more capable of working him harm than strangers; and his greatest
danger lies in his own habits. — Aleister Crowley

The 'lords of the earth' are those who are doing their Will. It does not necessarily mean people with coronets and automobiles; there are plenty of such people who are the most sorrowful slaves in the world. The sole test of one's lordship is to know what one's true Will is, and to do it. — 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

Woe to that seven months abortion who thinks to take advantage of the accidents of birth, and, mocking the call of duty, sneaks off to stare at a wall in China! — 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

Practically, Science is true; and Faith is foolish. — 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

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

...the true test of the perversity of a pleasure is that it occupies a disproportionate amount of the attention. — Aleister Crowley

The nails from a suicide's coffin, and the skull of the parricide, were of course no trouble; for Vesquit never traveled without these household requisites. — 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

Who hath the how is careless of the why — 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

The man of earth is the adherent. The lover giveth his life unto the work among men. The hermit goeth solitary, and giveth only of his light unto men. — 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

I must make MAGICK the essential factor in the life of ALL. In presenting this book to the world, I must then explain and justify my position by formulating a definition of MAGICK and setting forth its main principles in such a way that ALL may understand instantly that their souls, their lives, in every relation with every other human being and every circumstance, depend upon MAGICK and the right comprehension and right application thereof. — Aleister Crowley

This is my real bed-rock objection to the eastern systems. They decry all manly virtue as dangerous and wicked, and they look upon Nature as evil. True enough, everything is evil relatively to Adonai; for all stain is impurity. A bee's swarm is evil - inside one's clothes. "Dirt is matter in the wrong place." It is dirt to connect sex with statuary, morals with art.
Only Adonai, who is in a sense the True Meaning of everything, cannot defile any idea. This is a hard saying, though true, for nothing of course is dirtier than to try and use Adonai as a fig-leaf for one's shame.
To seduce women under the pretense of religion is unutterable foulness; though both adultery and religion are themselves clean. To mix jam and mustard is a messy mistake. — Aleister Crowley

It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of performing these small ceremonies regularly, and being as nearly accurate as possible with regard to the times. You must not mind stopping in the middle of a crowded thoroughfare - lorries or no lorries - and saying the Adorations; and you must not mind snubbing your guest - or your host - if he or she should prove ignorant of his or her share of the dialogue. It is perhaps because these matters are so petty and trivial in appearance that they afford so excellent a training. They teach you concentration, mindfulness, moral and social courage, and a host of other virtues. — Aleister Crowley

O Godhead of glory and anguish!
O Christ shone through Magdalen's tears!
Thy sons on the universe languish
In iron bands strong as the spheres;
With virtue Thy likeness we cover,
With priestcraft we mock at Thy power,
And the meanest on earth is a lover,
As vile as a flower. — 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

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

In the wind of the mind arises the turbulence called I.
It breaks; down shower the barren thoughts.
All life is choked.
This desert is the abyss wherein the Universe.
The Stars are but thistles in that waste.
Yet this desert is but one spot accursed in a world of bliss — Aleister Crowley

The love and war in the previous injunctions are of the nature of sport, where one respects, and learns from the opponent, but never interferes with him, outside the actual game. To seek to dominate or influence another is to seek to deform or destroy him; and he is a necessary part of one's own Universe, that is, of one's self. — Aleister Crowley

Light, Life and Love are like three glow-worms at thy feet: the whole universe of stars, the dewdrops on the grass whereon thou walkest! — Aleister Crowley

It may interest you that, a day or so ago, attempting to discuss your ideas with regard to sex and religion, my eccentric friend, fixing his eyes rather fiercely upon me, growled abruptly: "Semen is God."
Unwilling to excite him further, I replied: Sir, though I understand perfectly what you mean by Semen, I am unacquainted with the connotation which you attach to the term "God". — Aleister Crowley

The most delicious sensation of all is the re-birth of healthy human love. Spring coming back to Earth! — Aleister Crowley

In order to possess "The Wonder-working Serpent," it is necessary, in the words of the Grimoire, "to buy an egg without haggling," which (by the way) indicates the class of person for and by whom the book was written. This egg is to be buried in a cemetery at midnight, and every morning at sunrise it must be watered with brandy. On the ninth day a spirit appears, and demands your purpose. You reply "I am watering my plant." This occurs on three successive days; at the midnight following the egg is dug up, and found to contain a serpent, with a cock's head. This amiable animal answers to the name of Ambrosiel. Carry it in your bosom, and your suit inevitably prospers. — Aleister Crowley

My observation of the Universe convinces me that there are beings of intelligence and power of a far higher quality than anything we can conceive of as human; that they are not necessarily based on the cerebral and nervous structures that we know, and that the one and only chance for mankind to advance as a whole is for individuals to make contact with such beings. — Aleister Crowley

I believe in one secret and ineffable LORD; and in one Star in the Company of Stars of whose fire we are created, and to which we shall return; and in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery, in His name CHAOS, the sole viceregent of the Sun upon the Earth; and in one Air the nourisher of all that breathes. And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us all, and in one Womb wherein all men are begotten, and wherein they shall rest, Mystery of Mystery, in Her name BABALON. — 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

Sex is the sacred song of the soul; Sex is the sanctuary of Self. — Aleister Crowley

Balance every thought with its opposition. Because the marriage of them is the destruction of illusion. — 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

Love stories are only fit for the solace of people in the insanity of puberty. No healthy adult human being can really care whether so-and-so does or does not succeed in satisfying his physiological uneasiness by the aid of some particular person or not. — Aleister Crowley

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

The two seem, at first glance, to be opposed, but when you have advanced a little in both, you find that concentration learned in Yoga is of immense use in attaining the mental powers necessary in Magick; on the other hand, the discipline of Magick is of the greatest service in Yoga. — Aleister Crowley

To use legal or financial constraint to compel either abstention or submission, is entirely horrible, unnatural and absurd. — Aleister Crowley

But this is a general objection of the sceptical sort to all miracles of whatever kind, and leadeth anon into the quagmire of arguments about Free Will. The Adept will do better to rely upon The Book of the Law , which urgeth constantly to action. Even rash action is better than none, by that Light; let the Magician then argue that his folly is part of the natural order which worketh all so well.
- Liber DCXXXIII De Thaumaturgia — 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

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

No recorded vision is perfect, of high visions, for the seer must keep either his physical organs or his memory in working order. And neither is capable. There is no bridge. One can only be conscious of one thing at a time, and as the consciousness moves nearer to the vision, it loses control of the physical and mental. — Aleister Crowley

It will be seen that the formula - 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law' has nothing to do with 'Do as you please.' It is much more difficult to comply with the Law of Thelema than to follow out slavishly a set of dead regulations. — 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

22. I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight and bright glory, and stir the hearts of men with drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, & be drunk thereof! They shall not harm ye at all. It is a lie, this folly against self. The exposure of innocence is a lie. Be strong, o man! lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for this. — Aleister Crowley

Truth! Truth! Truth! crieth the Lord of the Abyss of Hallucinations — 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

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

Aleister Crowley's reception of The Book of the Law was a direct manifestation and result of his initiation in the Golden Dawn. The Golden Dawn was, in fact, the basis of the proclamation of the New Aeon of Horus and the Law of Thelema. — David Cherubim

The old spelling MAGICK has been adopted throughout in order to distinguish the Science of the Magi from all its counterfeits. — Aleister Crowley

Every one interprets everything in terms of his own experience. If you say anything which does not touch a precisely similar spot in another man's brain, he either misunderstands you, or doesn't understand you at all. — Aleister Crowley

In the absence of willpower the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless. — Aleister Crowley

To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all. — Aleister Crowley

The word of sin is Restriction. O man! refuse not thy wife, if she will! O lover, if thou wilt, depart! There is no bond that can unite the divided but love: all else is a curse. Accursed! Accursed be it to the aeons! Hell. — Aleister Crowley

O bid these strangers go ;
Turn to my lips till their cup overflow ;
Hurt me with kisses, kill me with desire,
Consume me and destroy me with the fire
Of bleeding passion straining at the heart,
Touched to the core by sweetnesses that smart ;
Bitten by fiery snakes, whose poisonous breath
Swoons in the midnight, and dissolves to death ! — 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

I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle. — Aleister Crowley

Tell the truth, but lead so improbable a life that the truth will never be believed. — Aleister Crowley

To knot a sentence up properly, it has to be thought out carefully, and revised. New phrases have to be put in; sudden changes of subject must be introducted; verbs must be shifted to unsuspected localities; short words must be excised with ruthless hand; archaisms must be sprinkled like sugar-plums upon the concoction; the fatal human tendency to say things straightforwardly must be detected and defeated by adroit reversals; and, if a glimmer of meaning yet remain under close scrutiny, it must be removed by replacing all the principal verbs by paraphrases in some dead language. — 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

Keep on acquiring a taste for what is naturally repugnant; this is an unfailing source of pleasure. — 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

Don't talk for five minutes, there's a good chap! I've a strange feeling come over me
almost as if I were going to think! — Aleister Crowley