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To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.magick,talk.religion.misc,alt.thelema,alt.paranormal,talk.religion.newage,alt.magick.order
From: tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com (nigris (333))
Subject: AC/Evul Book Origin (was Re: AL & its Sources)
Date: 30 Jun 1997 17:21:37 -0700

49970620 aa2 Hail Satan!  LUNAtix!  SOLstice!!

E6

John Everall:
#>...if Aiwass possessed the same literary
#>& philosophical tastes as Crowley and a remarkably similar literary style
#>doesn't this point to authorship by Crowley? 

since we know that AC penned the Thing, then it would take, from my
preference, evidence to *back up* the extraordinary claim that some
non-Crowley entity or sub-personality did the authoring.  given what
you say above (with which I largely agree but am pretty uninformed,
as others have been showing me of late regarding politics :>), there
isn't evidence to support it as regards the difference in taste,
education or style, and so there is no reason to suppose separate
authorship in this sense.  it may have been AC's MPD, or it may have
been some portion of his mind repressed and resurfacing in trance.

I'm inclined to think that he either made Aiwass up or that Aiwass
was merely a subsection of the Crowley mind in some way.  however, I
still think that the text should be judged based on its overt merit, 
not its origins.  the latter method is the mistake of many religious.


#>Did Crowley perpetrate a deliberate fraud or did he believe the work 
#>to be that of Aiwass? I think the latter, but I would add that(IMO) 
#>he deluded himself into believing that an aspect of himself was a 
#>separate entity. In psychopathological studies this phenomenon is by 
#>no means uncommon.

is it possible that Crowley

	1) wanted very badly to become popular and successful
	   as a writer and religious prophet?  such deceptions would
	   have been known to him through his studies of religion (he
	   had sufficient quality critical skepticism).

	2) intended to initiate a religious movement based on the usual
	   fraud and deception for other reasons?  it could be that he
	   saw this as a necessary means to establish the Law of
	   Thelema through religious persuasions in the mind of 
	   ignorant and herdish humans (for those who dispute the 
	   fraudulent nature of how religions get started, I would
	   refer you to any number of modern start-ups).

	3) understood these differentiations of author-name with
	   different states of mind and yet didn't wish to make a
	   decision about their realities apart from him?  for similar
	   reasons as expressed above this choice not to decide may
	   well have served his purposes even if he supported both ends
	   of the decision spectrum at various points in his life (I
	   would love to see an analysis of how his ideas on this
	   changed over time -- something I am not prepared to render).


catzlaff@95net.com (Michelle/Tom Catlett-Tetzlaff):
#..a single body can house more than one fully developed personality.  
#(straight out of DSM III-R)  Maybe it would be more accurate, though 
#perhaps quibbling over a point, to point out that authorship by Aiwass 
#rather than by Crowley doesn't rule out that their origin is in the 
#same mind.

I would say that given that we have little evidence to the contrary,
it makes sence to START from this presumption and then see how much
evidence there was (real evidence, not just Crowley's possibly put-on
self-overviews) to presume anything else.


#Nor does it necessarily point to delusion or what we would view as a
#disabling dysfunction. One of my psych profs remarked that we were all
#really aggregate personalities - that the degree to which we are cohesive
#is really the determining factor in mental health.   

this makes a great deal of sense to me in reflection of my studies on MPD,
personality theory, and Buddhist psychology.


#some of the practices Crowley recommended (Liber III vel Jugorum, III b.)
#would encourage the development of either personality states or full
#alternate personalities - not to mention all this calling up of spirits and
#gods and other miscellaneous entities.  Magick seems to be an elaborate
#system to make positive use of this phenomenon, which is why the first
#axiom is to 'know thyself.'  

that's one of the reasons I've always admired Regardie's recommendation of
psychoanalysis prior to entering into serious magical practice, and I've
seen some of the nasty repercussions with not following it.


#...I tend to agree that Crowley was deluding himself - I think
#he knew too much about the workings of the mind in general to mistake what
#Aiwass seems to be.  

his writing was in many cases intended for *others*.  I think he was very
clear about it and was deluding others for his purposes.  more below.


#Maybe since Crowley said he initially disliked the content of Liber AL 

isn't this a classic and persuasive response to the delegation of a
revealed text?  doesn't it sound more convincing to the reader to learn
that the person who penned the text was initially adverse to the material
so revealed?  didn't Crowley, as a writer and student of religion, know
this?  couldn't he have put it to his own use in the review of his doings
surrounding the Evul Book, complete with shelving it for years?

I've written something in trance once which I have shelved that was, as
it came to my mind, a dictation from 'the AA', and was full of nonsense
syllables and peculiarity.  I thought it both fun to write and felt that
its inherent claim of being some sort of authoritative 'AA' document was
rather arrogant.  I shelved it for future reference and did not nor do I
now see that this batch of text need have originated outside myself.  I 
can be very arrogant at times, even while I attempt to push that portion 
of myself into the background for serious studies.  I think that any 
writer whose interest were magick and religion could experience something 
similar.  it is also possible that after the fact one could delude 
oneself about its contents or seek to construct an elaborate and 
fallacious system about any piece of writing by virtue of such deceptions.

I've occasionally done this purposefully in relation to documents I have
posted to Usenet.  example: there is a file called 'the alt.magick Rules'.
as anyone familiar with Usenet and alt.magick knows (perhaps to their
dismay) there is no authority constructed to maintain any sort of
conformity to 'rules', and the construction of a 'rules' file is merely
that, a subtle deception, albeit in my case with benevolent intent (to
get people who are new to the forum to reflect on basic posting practices
as described by a variety of Usenet 'authorities').

another example, more nefarious: upon more than one occasion I have posted
articles relating to H.P.Lovecraft's 'mythos' (such as an essay I wrote
on Kaos Majik and some sort of 'kaotik kreechurz', which I like alot; or
Colin Low's fabulous and deceptive 'history' of the Necronomicon) under
the aegis of presenting to the public something which derives from the
secret vaults of a professor at Mistakonic University.  anyone familiar
with Lovecraft or his stories or mythos or the games and other paraphernalia
attendant to this will of course comprehend my intent.  but there are some
who DO NOT and take it at face value (which is fine by me).

I only mean, in explaining these things, to indicate that there are some
very easy ways to manipulate the presentation of text so that it will appear
more important or of differing origins than is actual, and there are a host 
of reasons to engage this, especially if one is interested in launching
some sort of mass-movement or trying to become (in)famous/successful among
one's literary peers or the public.  I think we should seriously consider
why Crowley *can't* be said to have engaged any one of these things in his
writing and promotion of the Evul Book.


#it was more comfortable for him to see its author as originating outside 
#himself. Easier that way, and easier to slip into the
#'old-fashioned' way of calling personalities entities.

this is the secondary line of explanation which Crowley appeared to be
portraying.  the first was obviously that we take it all at face value,
believing in his exquisite standards of rational scrutiny, agreeing with
him that he must have been in contact with something which was 'profound'
and yet beyond our ability to explain, etc.  a tertiary line (which is
the one I'm presently promoting) was that he knew everying he was about
and was essentially constructing the elements of a fiction novel with
himself as one of the characters, complete with all the stereotypical
factors (initial resistance to the Message one is chosen to relay as a
Prophet is a classic).  it would be saying something if he never let on
in any of his correspondence or social interactions that this was the
case, but it certainly wouldn't be beyond the bounds of possibility.

E6/6/6
_______________________________________________________________________________
nigris (333) -- tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com -- http://www.hollyfeld.org/~tyagi/
-- 
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