THE ARCANE ARCHIVE
	a cache of usenet and other text files pertaining to occult, mystical, and spiritual subjects.

To: alt.magick,alt.magick.tyagi
From: catherine yronwode 
Subject: Re: ac's alleged anti-Semitism (aaa)
Date: Sat, 05 Jul 2003 15:10:50 -0800

Bilbo Baggins / blandcriminal wrote:

-- with respect to charges that Aleister Crowley was
anti-Semitic or, more properly speaking anti-Jewish and that
evidence of this is found in the preface to the original
edition of "777" -- 

Aleister Crowley wrote: 

> > "CAN any good thing come out of Palestine? is the broader anti-
> > Semitic retort to the sneer cast by the Jews themselves against the 
> > harmless and natural Nazarene; one more example of the poetic 
> > justice of History.

Crowley speaks here as a Christian, defending "the harmless
and natural Nazarene" (Jesus) against the "sneer" of the
Jews. 

The rhetorical question -- and hence endorsement of the idea
-- that it is "the poetic justice of history" for Jews to
suffer persecution by Christians because they (as a race, as
a culture, as a religious group) "sneered" at Jesus is a
justification that is pandemic in Christian anti-Jewish
thought. Entire books have been written which support this
logical fallacy, which Crowley endorses, and which has at
its extreme the accusation that "the Jews Killed Christ." 

I recommend two recent books on the history of this
anti-Jewish viewpoint, both written by Christians who seek
to oppose and put and end to the hostility and damage caused
by centuries of programmatic Christian anti-Jewish hatred:
They are "Who Killed Jesus" by John Dominic Crossan and "The
Sword of Constantine" by James Carroll. 

Next, skipping the portions of Crowley's arguments for and
against a study of the Kabbalah, we arrive at Aleister
Crowley writing this: 

> >    Human sacrifices are to-day still practised by the Jews of 
> > Eastern Europe,

> this misinformation, is this to be construed as anti-Semetic?

It is certainly an anti-Jewish lie. Calling it
"misinformation" is to soften the impact it was designed to
have on the reader. Crowley states this as FACT. 

By the way, the word you were mentioning is spelled
"Semitic," not "Semetic" and it refers to all Semites, not
only Jews. 

Semites are those whose native tongue belongs to a
particular language group known as Semitic, which includes
Akkadian, Ugaritic, Hebrew, and Arabic. Semitic languages,
in turn, are a sub-set of the Afro-Asiatic-Semitic language
group, which also includes ancient Egyptian, Berber-Tuareg,
Chushitic, and Chadic languages. 

Arabic Moslems are Semitic, and they are, quite obviously,
not Jews. Cushite Ethiopians also are Semitic. Semitic is
the oldest language family in continuous use, date back to
3,000 B.C. 

In Aleister Crowley's era -- and until fairly recently -- it
was considered "polite" to call bigoted people who disliked
Jews "anti-Semitic" -- as if they also hated Arabs and
Ethiopians with equal venom, when in fact such people were
generally unknown to them and the race-hatred was focussed
almost entirely on Jews. 

With the entrance into world politics of formerly remote
Semitic people who are not Jewish, and the mass migrations
that have led most European and American cities to house
large populations of Arabs as well as Jews, the term
"anti-Semitic" has become obsolete, and modern usage
recommends calling a spade a spade and identifying a person
who expresses bigotry, prejudice, or hostility against Jews
as "anti-Jewish." 

> > as is set forth at length by the late Sir Richard Burton in the MS.
> > which the wealthy Jews of England

> conspiracy mongering: is this to be the height of ac's 'anti-
> Semitism?'

No, it is not. I take the *height* of Aleister Crowley's
anti-Jewish polemic to be the charge of contemporary human
sacrifices in Eastern Europe, as he clearly stated above.
Conspiracy-mongering is a lesser included offense. 
 
> > have compassed heaven and earth to suppress, and
> > evidenced by the ever-recurring Pogroms against which so senseless
> > an outcry is made by those who live among those degenerate Jews who
> > are at least not cannibals."

> sounds like he is *lampooning* an ignoramaus view to me. ac *does* do
> this a lot, sometimes it is more obvious than other times.

There is no evidence of lampooning here. Aleister Crowley
flatly says that 
   1) "the wealthy Jews of England have compassed heaven and
earth to suppress" the late Sir Richard Burton's
documentation of human sacrifices practiced by Eastern
European Jews 
   2) the recurring pogroms against Eastern European Jews
are factual "evidence" of the these ritual murders by Jews, and
   3) it is "senseless" for the attacks against Jews in
Eastern Europe to be politically or socially protested by
liberal non-Jews who live among the English Jews because the
latter are "degenerate" human beings, albeit "not
cannibals." 

> maybe someone can unpack this last part for us? 'Pogroms?' 
> 'at least not cannibals?' i can't make heads or tails of it to be
> quite honest. i can only conjecture as i have done above, lacking 
> some history knowledge.

Consult a dictionary -- or, do as i just have done for you
and go to http://www.google.com and type in these words:
     
     pogrom definition

Doing that results in a list of 4,080 web pages contain the
terms "pogrom" and "definition", of which the page given top
ranking for relevance by the google search engine is "Pogrom
Definition" at
 
     http://www.humboldt.edu/~rescuers/book/Makuch/pogrom.html

where you can read the following:

     -----------------------------------------------------------

     Pogrom 

     Derived from the Russian word meaning "wreak havoc," a
pogrom 
     is an organized attack, often a massacre, against a
minority 
     group, particularly Jews. For centuries the Jews in
Russian 
     lands were periodically victim to such persecutions,
often 
     with the active encouragement of local officials. 

     -----------------------------------------------------------

Notice the definition mentions that Jews in Russia (part of
Eastern Europe) were "periodically victim" to pogroms -- and
that Aleister Crowley calls these attacks "the
ever-recurring Pogroms" -- so the two authors agree that
these pogroms or massacres of Jews were a periodic,
recurrent phenomenon, which, in fact, a study of history
will confirm. (I have no idea why Crowley capitalized
"pogroms," by the way; it is not a proper noun.)

Anti-Jewish legislation in various parts of Europe -- mass
forced conversions to Christianity under threat of death,
mass expulsions, laws forbidding Jews to own farmland, etc.
--  began in the Medieval period of the Crusades and by way
of the Catholic Inquisition it persisted through the
Renaissance. For instance, all Jews were expelled from Spain
and its colonies such as Sicily (now part of Italy) in 1492. 

Many of the Jews displaced from Western and Central Europe
by the Inquisition and its allied legislative evictions
settled in Eastern Europe. In Poland, Lithuania, and Russia
(the former two nations eventually absorbed by the latter),
anti-Jewish campaigns waxed and waned in frequency and
intensity and were incited by leaders of the local Christian
churches. The massacres of Jews in 1349 in Silesia and
1648-1649 in Poland typify the sporadic onset of
non-legislative attacks on Jews in Eastern Europe. 

Eventually, under Tsar Alexander III of Russia (1845 - 1894;
Tsar from 1881 - 1894) there was a distinct rise in
non-legislative anti-Jewish violence and term "pogrom" came
to be universally applied to such violent attacks and massacres.

During the late 1880s and early 1890s, political protests
against the tacit governmental condoning of illegal pogroms
in Russia began to be made by Jews living in Western Europe
and the Americas. These protests included attempts to
document government and Christian church collusion in
supposedly "spontaneous" pogroms. One such protest was held
in London. 

It is these outcries to which Crowley is referring when he
says it is "senseless" for British non-Jews to speak out
against the pogroms because, he claims, the Jews of Eastern
are actually guilty of ritual murder "as evidenced by" the
pogroms. 

The mid-19th century pogroms at Kiev and 30 nearby villages,
the devastating 1903-4 pogroms at Kishinev in Southeastern
Russia, and the 1905 pogrom in Minsk led to the waves of
emigration by Jews from Russia. Many of the refugees
relocated to the USA and England. The Russian pogroms -- and
worldwide protests against them  -- continued after the fall
of the Russian empire in 1917, for during the Russian Civil
War, there were pogroms in the Ukraine in 1919. However, the
Bolsheviks put an end to the pogroms. (They had other
failings as rulers, but that is another story.) 

You can read a bit of documentation of the pogroms that were
contemporary to Aleister Crowley's life in the writings of
the Anarchist Jew Emma Goldman, who described the pogroms in
Kiev in her book "My Disillusionment in Russia" (1923). Find
an excerpt online at:
 
     dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/
goldman/disillusion/ch21.html 

You can learn much  more about the centuries long history of
Eastern European pogroms -- and quite a bit about the
history of the Kabbalah as well -- by reading a book called
"History of the Jews in Poland and Russia" by Simon Dubnow.
It was originally published in 1918 but is still in print,
and well worth checking out. A table of contents (and an
order button) for this book can be found at 

     http://www.avotaynu.com/dubnow.htm

I suggest that you *at least* read Dubnow's table of
contents -- and i am therefore appending it to the bottom of
this post so that its keywords will be searchable if anyone
needs some historical backgrounding in what Aleister Crowley
was referring to in "777" and why people say Aleister
Crowley is anti-Semitic or, more properly, anti-Jewish. 

With respect to the other portion of the Aleister Crowley
text from "777" which you said you could not understand -- 
the reference to Jews who were 'at least not cannibals' --
look in Dubnow's book for "The Ritual Murder Trial of
Velizh" in the early 19th century and "The Ritual Murder
Trial of Saratov" in the mid 19th century. 

Jews were frequently accused of ritual sacrifice, murder,
and cannibalism in Eastern Europe -- and what Aleister
Crowley is claiming is that it is "senseless" to make an
"outcry against" or to politically protest the pogroms and
concomitant accusations of ritual murder in Eastern Europe
-- because the pogroms themselves are confirmation that the
ritual murders took place -- and that it is "especially"
senseless when the political protests are "made by those
[English NON-Jews] who live among those degenerate [English]
Jews who are at least not cannibals" -- that is, not
themselves personally guilty of ritual murder. 

In other words, Aleister Crowley is saying something to this effect:

"Jews deserve persecution because they sneered at Jesus
Christ .... The wealthy Jews of England may not be
cannibals, but they are degenerate human beings and they are
moving heaven and earth to suppress evidence of the ritual
murders and cannibalism committed by their fellow Jews in
Eastern Europe, as documented by Sir Richard Burton. Don't
be fooled into protesting the pogroms against Jews in
Eastern Europe, because those pogroms are proof that Eastern
European Jews do commit ritual murder and it would be
senseless for a non-Jew to take the side of the degenerate
wealthy English Jews in making such protests against the
pogroms." 

This is no joke and no lampoon. 

And this is why folks say that Aleister Crowley was an
anti-Jewish bigot and racist.

cat yronwode 

P.S. Here is the table of contents for Simon Dubnow's 618
page "History of the Jews in Poland and Russia" (1918),
followed by a brief description of the book itself, all from
   http://www.avotaynu.com/dubnow.htm
                                                            
                              
Contents

CHAPTER I: THE JEWISH DIASPORA IN EASTERN EUROPE

1. The Jewish Settlements on the Shores of the Black Sea. .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2. The Kingdom of the Khazars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. The Jews in the Early Russian Principalities and in the
Tataric Khanate of the Crimea . . . .  . . . 9

CHAPTER II: THE JEWISH COLONIES IN POLAND AND LITHUANIA

1. The Immigration from Western Europe During the Period of
the Crusades. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2. The Charter of Prince Boleslav and the Canons of the
Church. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3. Rise of Polish Jewry Under Casimir The Great . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4. Polish Jewry during the Reign of Yaghello. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5. The Jews of Lithuania during the Reign of Vitovt . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6. The Conflict between Royalty and Clergy Under Casimir IV.
and His Sons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

CHAPTER III: THE AUTONOMOUS CENTER IN POLAND AT ITS ZENITH (1501-1648)

1. Social and Economic Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2. The Liberal Regime of Sigismund I. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3. Liberalism and Reaction in the Reigns of Sigismund
Augustus and Stephen Batory . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4. Shlakhta and Royalty in the Reigns of Sigismund III and
Vladislav IV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

CHAPTER IV: THE INNER LIFE OF POLISH JEWRY AT ITS ZENITH

1. Kahal Autonomy and the Jewish Diets. . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2. The Instruction of the Young . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3. The High-Water Mark of Rabbinic Learning . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4. Secular Sciences, Philosophy, Cabala, and Apologetics. .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

CHAPTER V: THE AUTONOMOUS CENTER IN POLAND DURING ITS
DECLINE (1648-1772)

1. Economic and National Antagonism in the Ukraina. . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
2. The Pogroms and Massacres of 1648-1649 . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
3. The Russian and Swedish Invasions (1654-1658). . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4. The Restoration (1658-1697). . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5. Social and Political Dissolution . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
6. A Frenzy of Blood Accusations. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
7. The Massacre of Uman and the First Partition of Poland .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

CHAPTER VI: THE INNER LIFE OF POLISH JEWRY DURING THE PERIOD
OF DECLINE

1. Jewish Self-Government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  91
2. Rabbinical and Mystical Literature . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  96
3. The Sabbatian Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  99
4. The Frankist Sect. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
5. The Rise of Hasidism and Israel Baal-Shem-Tob. . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
6. The Hasidic Propaganda and the Growth of Tzaddikism. . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
7. Rabbinism, Hasidism, and the Forerunners of
Enlightenment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114

CHAPTER VII: THE RUSSIAN QUARANTINE AGAINST JEWS (TILL 1772)

1. The Anti-Jewish Attitude of Muscovy During the Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Centuries. . . . . .. . . . 117
2. The Jews under Peter I and His Successors. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
3. Elizabeth Petrovna and the First Years of Catherine II .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

CHAPTER VIII: POLISH JEWRY DURING THE PERIOD OF THE PARTITIONS

1. The Jews of Poland after the First Partition . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
2. The Period of the Quadrennial Diet (1788-1791) . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
3. The Last Two Partitions and Berek Yoselovich . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
4. The Duchy of Warsaw and the Reaction under Napoleon. . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

CHAPTER IX: THE BEGINNINGS OF THE RUSSIAN REGIME

1. The Jewish Policy of Catherine II (1772-1796). . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
2. Jewish Legislative Schemes during the Reign of Paul I. .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
3. Dyerzhavin's "Opinion" on the Jewish Problem . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

CHAPTER X: THE "ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM" OF ALEXANDER I

1. "The Committee for the Amelioration of the Jews.". . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
2. The "Jewish Constitution" of 1804. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
3. The Projected Expulsion from the Villages. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
4. The Patriotic Attitude of Russian Jewry during the War of
1812 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
5. Economic and Agricultural Experiments. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

CHAPTER XI: THE INNER LIFE OF RUSSIAN JEWRY DURING THE
PERIOD OF "ENLIGHTENED ABSOLUTISM"

1. Kahal Autonomy and City Government . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
2. The Hasidic Schism and the Intervention of the
Government. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
3. Rabbinism, Hasidism, and Enlightened "Berlinerdom" . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

CHAPTER XII: THE LAST YEARS OF ALEXANDER I

1. "The Deputation of the Jewish People". . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
2. Christianizing Endeavors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
3. "Judaizing" Sects in Russia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
4. Recrudescence of Anti-Jewish Legislation . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
5. The Russian Revolutionaries and the Jews . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE-VOLUME II

CHAPTER XIII: THE MILITARY DESPOTISM OF NICHOLAS I

1. Military Service as a Means of De-Judaization. . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
2. The Recruiting Ukase of 1827 and Juvenile Conscription .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
3. Military Martyrdom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
4. The Policy of Expulsions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
5. The Codification of Jewish Disabilities. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
6. The Russian Censorship and Conversionist Endeavors . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218

CHAPTER XIV: COMPULSORY ENLIGHTENMENT AND INCREASED OPPRESSION

1. Enlightenment as a Means of Assimilation . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
2. Uvarov and Lilienthal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
3. The Abolition of Jewish Autonomy and Renewed
Persecutions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
4. Intercession of Western European Jewry . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
5. The Economic Plight of Russian Jewry and Agricultural
Experiments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
6. The Ritual Murder Trial of Velizh. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
7. The Mstislavl Affair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

CHAPTER XV: THE JEWS IN THE KINGDOM OF POLAND

1. Plans of Jewish Emancipation . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
2. Political Reaction And Literary Anti-Semitism. . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244
3. Assimilationist Tendencies Among the Jews of Poland. . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
4. The Jews and the Polish Insurrection Of 1831 . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250

CHAPTER XVI: THE INNER LIFE OF RUSSIAN JEWRY DURING THE
PERIOD OF MILITARY DESPOTISM

1. The Uncompromising Attitude of Rabbinism . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
2. The Stagnation of Hasidism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 256
3. The Russian Mendelssohn (Isaac Baer Levinsohn) . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
4. The Rise of Neo-Hebraic Culture. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
5. The Jews and the Russian People. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268

CHAPTER XVII: THE LAST YEARS OF NICHOLAS I

1. The "Assortment" of the Jews . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
2. Compulsory Assimilation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
3. New Conscription Horrors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
4. The Ritual Murder Trial of Saratov . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274

CHAPTER XVIII: THE ERA OF REFORMS UNDER ALEXANDER II

1. The Abolition of Juvenile Conscription . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
2. "Homeopathic" Emancipation and the Policy of "Fusion". .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277
3. The Extension of the Right of Residence. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
4. Further Alleviations and Attempts at Russification . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
5. The Jews and the Polish Insurrection of 1863 . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288

CHAPTER XIX: THE REACTION UNDER ALEXANDER II

1. Change of Attitude Toward the Jewish Problem . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
2. The Informer Jacob Brafman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293
3. The Fight Against Jewish "Separatism". . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
4. The Drift Toward Oppression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

CHAPTER XX: THE INNER LIFE OF RUSSIAN JEWRY DURING THE REIGN
OF ALEXANDER II

1. The Russification of the Jewish Intelligenzia. . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
2. The Society for the Diffusion of Enlightenment . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
3. The Jewish Press . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 308
4. The Jews and the Revolutionary Movement. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311
5. The Neo-Hebraic Renaissance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
6. The Harbinger of Jewish Nationalism (Perez Smolenskin) .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
7. Jewish Literature in the Russian Language. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319

CHAPTER XXI: THE ACCESSION OF ALEXANDER III AND THE
INAUGURATION OF POGROMS

1. The Triumph of Autocracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
2. The Initiation of the Pogrom Policy. . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
3. The Pogrom at Kiev . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 326
4. Further Outbreaks in South Russia. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328

CHAPTER XXII: THE ANTI-JEWISH POLICIES OF IGNATYEV

1. The Vacillating Attitude of the Authorities. . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
2. The Pogrom Panic and the Beginning of the Exodus . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
3. The Gubernatorial Commissions. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
4. The Spread of Anti-Semitism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
5. The Pogrom at Warsaw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 342

CHAPTER XXIII: NEW MEASURES OF OPPRESSION AND PUBLIC PROTESTS

1. The Despair of Russian Jewry . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
2. The Voice of England and America . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
3. The Problem of Emigration and the Pogrom at Balta. . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
4. The Conference of Jewish Notables at St. Petersburg. . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354

CHAPTER XXIV: LEGISLATIVE POGROMS

1. The "Temporary Rules" of May 3, 1882 . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
2. Abandonment of the Pogrom Policy . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
3. Disabilities and Emigration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361

CHAPTER XXV: INNER UPHEAVALS

1. Disillusionment of the Intelligenzia and the National
Revival. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
2. Pinsker's "Autoemancipation" . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
3. Miscarried Religious Reforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369

CHAPTER XXVI: INCREASED JEWISH DISABILITIES

1. The Pahlen Commission and New Schemes of Oppression. . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
2. Jewish Disabilities Outside the Pale . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
3. Restrictions in Education and in the Legal Profession. .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 378
4. Discrimination in Military Service . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381

CHAPTER XXVII: RUSSIAN REACTION AND JEWISH EMIGRATION

1. Aftermath of the Pogrom Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
2. The Conclusions of the Pahlen Commission . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 386
3. The Triumph of Reaction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
4. American and Palestinian Emigration. . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391

CHAPTER XXVIII: JUDAEOPHOBIA TRIUMPHANT

1. Intensified Reaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
2. Continued Harassing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396
3. The Guildhall Meeting in London. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399
4. The Protest of America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402

CHAPTER XXIX: THE EXPULSION FROM MOSCOW

1. Preparing the Blow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405
2. The Horrors of Expulsion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
3. Effect of Protests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
4. Pogrom Interludes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411

CHAPTER XXX: BARON HIRSCH'S EMIGRATION SCHEME AND UNRELIEVED SUFFERING

1. Negotiations with the Russian Government . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
2. The Jewish Colonization Association and Collapse of the
Argentinian Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
3. Continued Humiliations and Death of Alexander III. . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417


CHAPTER XXXI: THE ACCESSION OF NICHOLAS II

1. Continued Policy of Oppression . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422
2. The Martyrdom of the Moscow Community. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424
3. Restrictions in the Right of Residence . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 426
4. The Economic Collapse of Russian Jewry . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 429
5. Professional and Educational Restrictions. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431
6. Anti-Semitic Propaganda and Pogroms. . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433

CHAPTER XXXII: THE NATIONAL AWAKENING

1. The Rise of Political Zionism. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 438
2. Spiritual Zionism, or Ahad-Ha'amism. . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
3. Spiritual Nationalism, or National-Cultural Autonomism .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443
4. The Jewish Socialistic Movement. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445
5. The Revival of Jewish Letters. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 446

CHAPTER XXXIII: THE KISHINEV MASSACRE

1. Pogroms as a Counter-Revolutionary Measure . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
2. The Organized Kishinev Butchery. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
4. Doctor Herzl's Visit to Russia . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457

CHAPTER XXXIV: CONTINUED POGROMS AND THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR

1. The Pogrom at Homel and the Jewish Self-Defence. . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
2. The Kishinev Massacre at the Bar of Russian Justice. . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
3. The Jews in the Russo-Japanese War . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
4. The "Political Spring" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465
5. The Homel Pogrom before the Russian Courts . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466

CHAPTER XXXV: THE REVOLUTION OF 1905 AND THE FIGHT FOR EMANCIPATION

1. The Jews in the Revolutionary Movement . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
2. The Struggle for Equal Rights. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470
3. The "Black Hundred" and the "Patriotic" Pogroms. . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
4. The Jewish Franchise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476

CHAPTER XXXVI: THE COUNTER-REVOLUTION AND THE OCTOBER MASSACRES

1. The Fiendish Designs of the "Black Hundred". . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 478
2. The Russian St. Bartholomew Night. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 479
3. The Undaunted Struggle for Equal Rights. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
4. The Jewish Question before the First Duma. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 483
5. The Spread of Anarchy and the Second Duma. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485

CHAPTER XXXVII: EXTERNAL OPPRESSION AND INTERNAL CONSOLIDATION

1. The New Alignments within Russian Jewry. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
2. The Triumph of the "Black Hundred" . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489
3. The Third, or Black, Duma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
4. New Jewish Disabilities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 493
5. The Spiritual Revival of Russian Jewry . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495

RUSSIAN JEWRY SINCE 1911 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  497

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  500

INDEX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  515

                 
Publisher's Note:

 ----

 One of the great histories of the Jews of Eastern Europe is Simon
 Dubnow's History of the Jews in Poland and Russia. This
 three-volume work, which was published in 1918, has been
 republished by Avotaynu as a single 600-page volume.

 Dubnow was considered to be one of the greatest Jewish
 historians of the 20th century, and History of the Jews in Poland
 and Russia was one of his most important works. It details the
 history of the Jews of Eastern Europe from their earliest presence
 in Greek times to about 1910. Discussed are the Khazars, the
 Crusades, the rise of Polish Jewry under the early kings of Poland,
 the Cossack rebellion of 1648, the rise of Hasidism, the false
 Messiahs, the creation of the Pale of Settlement, and
Jewish life
 under the laws created by the czars, and the pogroms of the late
 19th and early 20th centuries.

 7" x 10"  618 pages  hardcover                   $69.50

---

From alt.magick.tyagi Thu Jul 10 00:21:37 2003
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Regarding Aleister Crowley's claim in "Sepher Sephiroth" --
collected in "777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister
Crowley" -- that (and i quote from Crowley here): 

> >    Human sacrifices are to-day still practised by the Jews of 
> > Eastern Europe, as is set forth at length by the late Sir 
> > Richard Burton in the MS. which the wealthy Jews of England
> > have compassed heaven and earth to suppress, and evidenced by 
> > the ever-recurring Pogroms against which so senseless an 
> > outcry is made by those who live among those degenerate Jews
> > who are at least not cannibals."

First, for those completely unfamiliar with Sir Richard
Burton (1821-1890), the great 19th century explorer and
Orientalist, i recommend a google search or a trip to the
library. 

With respect to the writings of Aleister Crowley, the most
notable of Sir Richard Burton's works is "The Perfumed
Garden of Sheikh Nefzaoui" -- Burton's translation of an
Arabic heterosexual erotic manuscript,  which Crowley in
turn used as the direct stylistic and format template for
his own homosexual erotic pastiche published under the title
"The Scented Garden of Abdullah the Satirist of Shiraz." 

The evident leader-follower connection between Burton the
explorer and author and Crowley the tourist and
pastiche-writer makes Aleister Crowley's admiration for and
debt to the works of Sir Richard Burton quite obvious to all
of his biographers and to even the most casual reader of
Crowley. 

Back in the 1980s or 1990s, when Bill Heidrick typed out and
posted the electronic file version of Crowley's anti-Jewish
preface to "Sepher Sephiroth," he added an editorial note to
the Crowley paragraph above. He claimed that Crowley was
writing with "irony." Said Heidrick:

     WEH NOTE:  Crowley's irony at times has led to his
detriment. 
     Elsewhere, and much later, he denies the validity of the
     "Blood Libel." Here he writes in somewhat dubious humor 
     an anti-Semitic seeming introduction to a book on
Jewish 
     mysticism

You can find copies of the Crowley manuscript, as edited and
annotated by Bill Heidrick, at several places on the web.
One such place is:

www.luckymojo.com/esoteric/occultism/magic/ceremonial/crowley/500ssephiroth.txt

However, Heidrick's editorial note aside, there is
absolutely no literary or biographical evidence that the
passage in question was intended by Crowley as "irony" or
even as "humor." It is, rather, Crowley's simple,
straightforward acceptance of and agreement with Sir Richard
Burton's claim that human sacrifice was, during the late
Victorian era, circa 1880 - 1890, actually being practiced
by Jews in Eastern Europe -- and it is accompanied by a
simple, factual comment by Crowley that a group of wealthy
Jews in England had paid a lot of money to suppress the
Burton's manuscript detailing these charges and to see that
it was not published. 

There is current documentation that proves that Crowley's
comment that a group of wealthy Jews in England had bought
the unpublished anti-Jewish Burton manuscript with the aim
of suppressing it is entirely factual and not in any way
humourous. In fact, this group of Jews succeeded in
suppressing the Burton manuscript for almost 100 years --
until 2001. 

Please go to

     http://www.jewishsf.com/bk010608/ip8b.shtml 

where there is an article titled "Controversial sale of
anti-Semitic book falls through," written by Richard Allen
Green of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 

The Greene article is protected by copyright and so i cannot
reproduce it here, but hitting the high spots, it says that
"nearly 100 years ago" (e.g. circa 1903-5, at the time when
the violent anti-Jewish pogroms and massacres at Kishinev
and Minsk in Russia were in the headlines) "the Board of
Deputies of British Jews," an "umbrella organization" of
Jewish groups in England, gained possession of "a
controversial Victorian manuscript" written by Sir Richard
Burton, titled "Human Sacrifice Among the Sephardine or
Eastern Jews." The manuscript has never been published and
in fact only a few scholars have read it. 

The article further states that in June 2001 the Burton
manuscript was put up for auction at Christie's in London in
order to raise funds for the British "umbrella group" -- a
highly controversial plan that ultimately failed when the
bidding did not achieve the pre-set reserve price and the
manuscript therefore remained unsold. 

The failed sale of "Human Sacrifice Among the Sephardine or
Eastern Jews" created a lot of negative publicity about both
the long-dead  Sir Richard Burton and the Jews who had
suppressed the manuscript and whose descendants then tried
to sell it for ready cash. The ensuing  controversy tore
apart inter-Jewish alliances in England at the time. The
Burton manuscript specifically targeted one group of Jews,
the Sephardim (called Sephardine by Burton, who evidently
did not count Hebrew among the many languages he spoke) and
the Sephardic Jews on the Board of Deputies of British Jews
were said to be "'shocked and surprised' at not having been
consulted about the sale" by the board  members who were
Ashkenazy Jews.

Further discussion that took place in 2001 regarding the
Burton manuscript and its implications can be found at this
web-board archive: 

     www.isidore-of-seville.com/burton/board/38.html

I hope that these notes help O.T.O. members and others
understand that when a Jew such as myself says in usenet or
on the web that Aleister Crowley was a racist, an
anti-Jewish bigot, or that he was prejudiced against Jews,
it is not a failure of "humour" or an inability to
appreciate "irony" that elicits the comment. 

Further, while i appreciate Bill Heidrick's diligence and
have sympathy for his thankless task, i cannot condone his
attempt to mislead people into thinking that Crowley's
paragraph stating a clear belief in the premises expounded
by  Sir Richard Burton in "Human Sacrifice Among the
Sephardine or Eastern Jews" was some sort of literary prank.
It was not. 

Crowley admired Sir Richard Burton beyond all measure. He
wrote an entire book aping a book by Sir Richard Burton. He
knew that around the time of the violent anti-Jewish pogroms
and massacres in Kishinev and Minsk, the Board of Deputies
of British Jews had purchased the manuscript copy of
Burton's "Human Sacrifice Among the Sephardine or Eastern
Jews" in order to suppress it, and he alerted his non-Jewish
readers to this fact, while also citing the pogroms
themselves as "evidence" of the truth of Burton's charges,
and labelling as "senseless" the political protests in
England, Western Europe, and the Americas that were then
being mounted against the pogroms by people he called
"degenerate" Jews.

catherine yronwode

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Xref: typhoon.sonic.net alt.magick:351193 alt.magick.tyagi:40303

Blandcriminal / Bilbo Baggins / Satanas --

Let us agree to disagree. 

I did not come to the writings of Aleister Crowley
*expecting* to find a racist. 

I came to his writings as an aspiring student of magic who
happened to be Jewish, and this during the height of the
Civil Rights Movement, at that. 

I was privileged to be able to read all of his books in
their first editions, one after another, because my parents
owned an antiquarian bookstore and in the mid 1960s had
purchased the estate of an elderly wealthy woman who had
known Crowley well and had amassed an extensive library on
ceremonial magic, physical culture, sex magic, and
Theosophy. She was known to me as "The Mistress of the Lotus
Lodge," and had lived in Oakland, California during her
retirement, dying of a heart attack while performing what
seems to have been a money drawing spell, for she was found
dead within a circle of gold coins worth many many thousands
of dollars with a spiral of flung-out tarot cards around her
(the first printing of the Waite-Smith deck, as it happened,
although she also had Crowley-Harris cards and even a
brochure for the art gallery display of Harris' original
tarot paintings in London, with a colour cover and text by
Crowley). 

My parents bought not only her books, but other things of
value from her estate; i received a theatrical golden
ceremonial headdress with pears and leaves worked into it
(silver-marked from London in the late 1880s and plated with
gold) for my part in cataloguing the library for sale. 

As i catalogued, i read each book -- and some i was able to
read twice or three times before they sold. I took extensive
notes, for there were no xerox machines in those days. I
copied out entire pages by hand, complete with sigils and
diagrams. I still recall the beautiful raised leather
bindings, some with gilded edges, some with fore-edge
marbling, and the soft smell of the pure rag paper. 

For the most part, i read the books in the order of their
publication, trying to recreate the way The Mistress of the
Lotus Lodge must have encountered them, interspersing
Crowley with Waite and Mathers and lesser-known (but to me
no less valuable) authors like John William Lloyd the
sex-mystic, and Bernarr Mcfadden the proponent of physical
culture. 

After reading dozens, perhaps even a hundred racial slurs,
epithets, put-downs, and denigrations in these Victorian and
Edwardian era books, i began to feel oppressed. There was so
much in them about "race purity" and "the Negro Problem" and
"the Jewish Problem" -- and, of course, i knew full well
where that had led, because my mother had fled Hitler's
Germany in 1936 and settled in the United States to escape
anti-Jewish violence. Many of the racist authors of these
books on magic and the occult were British or lived in
Britain, and i knew that Britain had "been our Ally during
the War." So if they hated Hitler, why did they also hate
Jews? And why did they write books on the Kabbalah?

My family was highly political. I had marched in support of
racial integration and nuclear disarmament with my parents
since i was a young child. We were just then, during the
Lyndon Johnson administration, on the brink of finally,
irrevocably bringing equal rights to all Americans, or so i
believed, not knowing how long it would actually take in the
case of Americans who were female, gay, or transgendered. I
was (and am) a person of strong convictions, and the
conviction of racial equality had been upon me since i was
five years old and first met my fellow classmates in
kindergarten, an assortment of children who self-identified
variously as English, Scots-Irish, Portuguese, Italian,
Jewish, Armenian, Mexican, Negro, Chinese, Japanese, and
"Heinz 57."

The most unremittingly and consistently racist writings i
found in the library of the Mistress of the Lotus Lodge were
the works of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Aleister Crowley.
I finally stopped reading the Blavatsky books. They just
made me sick. Their prose was tedious, they seemed full of
fabulous lies, and i was not enjoying them, so i felt no
remorse at removing them from my bedside stacks. 

Aleister Crowley was another matter. His work was lively,
engaging, filled with wit, and it emanated a hint of shared
jokes with his educated readers. And those beautiful
bindings! The rich paper stock! I gave him chance after
chance after chance. But after reading the third or fourth
dozen racist remark in 777, the Confessions, and the bound
volumes of the Equinox, i finally came to the conclusion
that he was a racist. And yet i finished his books, and read
some twice, and the Book of Thoth three times at least. I
will admit, however, that i had more enjoyment from the
works of Arthur Edward Waite. They were doggedly scholarly
and certainly gave my Latin dictionary a work-out, but Waite
projected a friendliness and acceptance of all people among
the agate-point footnotes that littered the bottoms of his
pages and continued from page to page until some pages were
more footnote than text. 

Within the next two years, after leaving home, i embarked
upon a formal program of esoteric study, working my way
through the various magical disciplines from their earliest
times to the present -- alchemy, spell-craft, demonology,
sex magic, Kabbalah. When i began concentrating on astrology
-- an area of study that lasted 20 years and which i still
find useful -- i discovered the wonderful writings of the
1930s newspaper columnist and astrological popularizer
Evangaline Adams, whose two major books, it later came as no
surprise to me, had been ghostwritten for her by Aleister
Crowley. 

I've always liked Crowley's writing, even when i thought
someone else had done it. But he's still a racist. That's
just all there is to it, in my opinion. 

I could, i suppose, argue each instance of Crowley's racist
writings, paragraph by paragraph, in usenet, in order to
sway your opinion (or Bill Heidrick's, which i value more,
truth to tell). I could spend hours every day, submitting
each racist remark he made, book by book and chapter by
chapter, to the test of irony and to a thorough
backgrounding in historical context. 

I could even meet the racist Crowley more than halfway,
relating each racial epithet to his personal sexual
relationships at the time of writing -- for he tended to
praise the racial make-up of those with whom he was having
sex at the moment and to grotesquely derogate the racial
make-up of his lovers' husbands or anyone with whom he was
breaking up or by whom he had been dumped. But the very fact
that he did this -- the horrible things he said about the
racial background of the Indian author and scholar Ananda
Coomaraswamy (1877-1947), for instance, merely because he
was engaged in a failing affair with Coomaraswamy's wife! --
indicates that to him, the cheap and handy racial slur was
second nature. 

And why?

Because Aleister Crowley was a racist, a racial bigot.

And now, today's data points, placing Crowley's racism in
historical context: 
     
1) Ananda Coomaraswamy was born on August 22, 1877 at
Kollupitiya, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). He was two years
younger than Aleister Crowley and died the year Crowley
died; in other words, they were almost exact 
contemporaries. Coomaraswamy's mother was an English woman
named Elizabeth Clay-Beeby and his father, Sir Muttu
Coomaraswamy, was a legislator in Ceylon, the first Hindu to
be called to the English Bar, and the first Asian to receive
a British knighthood. After his father's untimely death,
Ananda Coomaraswamy was raised in England by his mother and
graduated as a Doctor of Geology from the University of
London. He worked in Sri Lanka as a geologist and
mineralogist, but was better known in later years for his
writings on metaphysics, religious iconography, and Asian
art. He was a Sri Lanka nationalist who founded the Ceylon
Social Reform Society and a newspaper called the "Ceylon
National Review." He travelled widely and his many books
were translated into numerous languages. He ended his career
as the curator of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the USA. 

3) Ananda Coomaraswamy's first wife was an English woman
named Ethel Mary Partridge (1872 -1952). Gifted both
musically and artistically, she had a teaching degree in
music from the Royal Academy of Music. Coomaraswamy and
Partridge were married in England and moved to Ceylon in
1903 where Coomaraswamy worked as a geologist until 1907.
They divorced in 1913. Shortly thereafter, Ethel married
Philip Mairet. She became world-renowned as a craft spinner
and weaver, travelled and lectured widely, and her six
still- influential books on vegetable textile dyes and hand
weaving were published under the name Ethel M. Mairet,
beginning in 1916. See pictures of her textiles and
information about the large hand-weaving workshop she
founded in 1918 and ran until her death, at:
     http://216.239.57.100/search?q=cache:EJdru0hgUaIJ:vads.ahds.ac.uk/learning/pictiva/CSC/mairet.html+ethel+mairet&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
And notice the Indian sitar displayed among her collection
of Ceylonese textiles. [Note: this URL is google's cache in
early July 2003 of a VADS site web page that is in the
process of being transferred to the Surrey Institute of Art
and Design's new web site and is not yet online there. If
the link does not work by the time you read this, simply do
a google search on "Ethel Mairet."]
See a photograph of Ethel Mairet here:
     http://www.petercollingwood.co.uk/bio2%20mairet.htm
Recall Crowley's comment that Britain should not allow
Indian students to study in England because they will have
sex with and marry English women. 

4) Ananda Coomaraswamy's second wife was another musical and
artistic  English woman, a singer named Alice Richardson.
She was a mezzo-soprano who used the stage name Ratan Devi
when singing Indian music. Her picture can be found at 
     www.allinsongallery.com/kinney/roshan.html
In 1916, she had an affair with Crowley, got pregnant
(Crowley says he was the father), dumped Crowley, went back
to her husband, and had a miscarriage (all this according to
Crowley). Again recall Crowley's racist statement that if
male Indian students are allowed to study in England they
will have sex with and marry English wives. 

5) Ananda Coomaraswamy and Ratan Devi eventually divorced
and in 1928 Ratan Devi, as Alice Richardson, married her
second husband, who also had a Ph.D. in mining and
metallurgy. He was an American man Francis Bitter. This is from:
     www.allinsongallery.com/kinney/roshan.html 

     Francis Bitter (FB) was born in Weehawken, N. J. on 
     July 22, 1902 to Karl Bitter, the sculptor, and Marie 
     Schevill Bitter. He grew up in Weehawken and New York City.

     Starting in 1919, FB attended the University of Chicago
but, 
     after working on a cattle boat in order to visit Europe
in 
     1922, he transferred to Columbia University. He
received his
     Bachelor of Science degree in 1925 and spent the next year
     studying in Berlin. He began a lifelong study of
magnets 
     when he returned to Columbia for graduate work. Under 
     A. P. Wills' supervision, FB wrote his dissertation on the
     diamagnetic susceptibility of hydrocarbons.

     FB received his doctoral degree in 1928 and continued
his 
     studies under Robert Millikan at the California
Institute of
     Technology with the support of a National Research
Fellowship. 
     The same year FB married Mrs. Alice Coomara [sic] (née 
     Richardson). Under the stage name of Ratan Devi his
wife 
     was a popular singer.

     [Snip many paragraphs about Bitter's pioneering work
with 
     magnets.] Francis Bitter died on July 26, 1967. In his
honor, 
     the National Magnet Laboratory was renamed the Francis Bitter
     National Magnet Laboratory on November 21, 1967.

6) Now we finally come to Crowley's very brief role in these
people's active lives. Too long to quote here is the account
by Crowley of his affair with Ratan Devi in 1916. It
contains many scurrilous, factually unsupported -- and
technically libelous -- statements that are not found in
other biographical treatments of Coomaraswamy's or Ratan
Devi's lives. See the full text at:

     www.hermetic.com/crowley/confess/chapter77.html

beginning with this paragraph:

            The next act was the appearance of Ananda K.
Koomaraswamy, the Eurasian critic of religion and art, with
his wife, Ratan Devi, a musician from Yorkshire, who had
fallen in love with him and filched him from his first wife.
He soon got sick of her and took refuge in India, but
finding it a continual nuisance to have to send her
supplies, wrote her to join him. It had been suggested, with
the secret hope that the climate would rid him of his
incubus. She made the journey in charge of his best friend,
a wealthy Punjabi, whom she promptly seduced.
 [etc. ad nauseum]

7) See "The Yogic Quest" by Richard Boyle at
   www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/ 1896/yogicquest.html

From which this is extracted: 

       "Crowley had one underlying problem with
Coomaraswamy: 
     the fact that he was Eurasian. Crowley disliked
Eurasians in
     general, confessing that they got on his nerves, and even
     describing them as 'anaemic abortions'. At one point in his
     autobiography, after recounting an unfortunate incident
with 
     a Eurasian in Burma, Crowley digresses in order to
malign 
     Eurasians in more detail. He states: 'Even the highest class
     Eurasians such as Ananda Koomaraswamy suffer acutely
from the 
     shame of being considered outcast.'

       "For some unexplained reason, Crowley consistently spells
     Coomaraswamy with a K, although the name appears
correctly in 
     the index. Did Crowley perhaps change the spelling to
avoid 
     having the same initials as the man he ended up
referring to as 
     The Worm?"

My point? These were real people with real accomplishments
-- English, and Ceylonese and American -- geologists,
musicians, artists, lecturers, and, above all, authors.
Crowley reduces them to a series of racial stereotypes --
the two English women seduced by the scheming anaemic
abortion of a Eurasian student who should never have been
allowed into Britain, the Punjabi seduced by the defiled
English woman who now poses as an Indian, the magician
Crowley fathering a magical child by the accomplished
English woman which is wrested from him and killed by the
scheming of the adulterous and perfidious Eurasian
half-breed. 

It's stupid. It's racist. I hate it.

cat yronwode
Sacred Sex: http://www.luckymojo.com/sacredsex.html