CANNABIS CULTURE – Like the cultural taboos that have surrounded the use of cannabis aka The Devil’s Weed, the name of Aleister Crowley, who fashioned himself the Beast 666 of the Bible’s Book of Revelation, can conjure up fears of insanity, debauchery and hedonism. A pioneer of free-love and the mystical use of drugs, Crowley was amongst the weeds that broke the pavement of the stodgy and morally repressed Victorian era. Although like both forms of alternative sex and drugs, Crowley’s writings are often shadowed with taboos, it is often found that many of his harshest critics are unfamiliar with his writings.
‘if creation did possess an aim
(It does not.) it were only to make hash
Of that most “high” and that most holy game’
–The Book of Lies, (Aleister Crowley, 1913)
The Devil puffing on a hookah
Born at the height of the Victorian era in 1875, into the household of a strict religious sect of Plymouth Brethren, the young Aleister Crowley was given little to read as a child besides the Holy Bible. even as child the indications of his genius were present, as was his spirit of rebellion. Having mastered the contents of the “Good Book”, he concluded at an early age that his mother’s references to him being a “beast”, indicated his identification with the “Beast, whose number is 666” of the New Testament’s book of Revelation. A horrendous role he strove to fulfill for much of his controversial life. Ironically, if Magick were ever to crown its own Messiah, Crowley would seemingly be the greatest contender for that title.
A precocious lad
Crowley used the term Magick, to differentiate his occult practices from those of the parlour magician and magic shows, likely adopting the spelling from Giambattista Della Porta’s Magick (1558).
Like Moses, Jesus and other prophets before him, Crowley certainly saw himself as a religious reformer. One of Crowley’s former chess partners, the Poet and author Clifford Bax, recalls the Beast telling him in February 1904, that he would be starting his own religion. ‘“What is the date at this moment?” …I told him… he said “in 100 years from this day the world will be sitting in the sunset of Crowley-anity.” He seemed to me a dangerous man as indeed he was, for he induced his disciples to experiment with drugs…’ (Bax, 1951) Not long after this, in April of 1904, Crowley would produce his most pivotal work, Liber Al, The Book of the Law, which he claimed ushered in a new age of religion. As we shall see, “drugs” clearly played a role in its conception.
A world class mountain climber and master chess player, Crowley was both a fit and intellectual individual who took a scientific approach to the emotionally and imaginatively charged art of magick. Among Crowley’s magickal goals was to both achieve and perfect a method of spiritual illumination, and it was this passion which likely led to his experimentation with drugs. As Crowley’s apprentice and student Israel Regardie noted in his eloquent book on the role of hashish in the occult, Role Away the Stone, which reprinted a number of works on the drug from Crolwey’s occult organization A*A*’s magical journal The Equinox, :
“….some of his finest writing deals with penetrating analyses of ether and hashish as aids to meditation, and as chemical devices to catapult the psyche headlong into the mystical experience. He contended, among other things, that if the Neophyte could taste the glory of the ineffability of his goals by means of an introductory dose of hashish, he would then be willing to embark upon a life-long program of self-discipline to make the divine intrinsic part of his being.” (Regardie, 1970)
Throughout his life, Crowley experimented with alcohol, ether hashish, anhalonium Lewinii [peyote], cocaine, opium, morphine, heroin and “not only with narcotics, but drugs such as… juice of the Vedic Soma, or Moon-plant*, and the Black Drink of the Florida Indians” (Grant, 1972). Even considerably toxic substances like Hemlock and Datura were tried via the empirical method.
*Grant gives no indication as to the chosen identity of Soma
Crowley read books on drugs, consulted with specialists on their use and set out to become an expert on the topic, producing a considerable amount of writing on the subject, including papers on cocaine, ether and hashish. He compared the effects of their use to states of madness, obsession and most importantly for this study states of mystical exaltation. As Crowley was a Magician, and kept diaries of his magical endeavours, it is clear from his “writings that he used drugs with the set purpose of invoking and questioning spirits, in much the same way Kelly and Dee questioned the spirits that appeared in their shew-stone” (Grant, 1972). Interestingly, evidence indicates the use of cannabis and opium by Dee and Kelly, and crolwey also claimed to have been Edward kelly in an earlier incarnation.
John Dee, English alchemist, mathematician and astrologer, with his assistant Edward Kelly, medium, alchemist and sorcerer. Dee gained Queen Elizabeth I’s favour by successfully selecting an astrologically favourable day for her coronation. Kelly persuaded Dee to accept him as an assistant and helped Dee to get visions from angels using a crystal ball.They followed an adventurous career as sorcerers in Europe trying to discover the “philosopher’s stone” that would convert common metals into gold. Their friendship was damaged when Kelly decided that they must share their wives. Here John Dee consults his crystal ball with Kelly in the background.
Modern occult writer Francis King has speculated that Crowley may have been initiated into the magickal use of drugs, by chemist and student of pharmacology George Cecil .Jones, who also introduced the young Aleister Crowley into the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1899.
“Most, although not all, Western occultists who have taken a favorable attitude towards the use of consciousness-altering drugs have been influenced by Aleister Crowley. Crowley’s favourite hallucinogen was mescal, which he claimed to have introduced to Europe; certainly he included it amongst the ingredients of the ‘loving cup’ he administered to the participants in the ‘Rites of Eleusis’ which he celebrated in Edwardian London, while one of Crowley ’s former disciples — almost certainly the only man who had both played first-class Country Cricket and evoked the god Thoth-Hermes to visible appearance — told me that, in pre-Hitler Berlin, Crowley gave mescal to amongst others, the youthful Aldous Huxley.”
“There is no record of Crowley ever having used Amanita muscaria , fly agaric, but there is some slight evidence that he may have known of its consciousness-altering properties.”
“The evidence in question is one of Crowley ’s paintings, used as the frontispiece of Vol. III, of his magazine The Equinox. In the background of the painting is portrayed an ecstatic woman dancer; in the foreground stands a dead tree, from a branch of which a corpse is suspended by the neck — a common symbol of the transition from one state of conscious to another. From behind the tree peers a grinning nature spirit, standing guard over what are quite clearly both the common and the rarer gold varieties of Amanita. The spirit has been given the features of C.G. Jones, a chemist and student of pharmacology who introduced Crowley to the Golden Dawn. It seems at least possible that the implication of this is that Jones had known of the properties of Amanita and had introduced Crowley to them.”
“… If Jones had been a participant in these experiments, as was, quite certainly, Alan Bennett of the Golden Dawn, it is possible that his curiosity concerning hallucinogens had been aroused by his reading of alchemical and magical literature, of which he was a dedicated student — there are passages in such works as The Magus (1801) and Theatrum Chemicum Brittanicum (1652) which I think refer to processes designed to extract hallucinogens from plant and animal substances” (King, 1990)
This painting of Crowley’s which depicts the red capped and white spotted Fly Aagaric mushroom, has led to speculation that Crowley may have had awareness of this species of psychoactive mushrooms.
Crowley may also have become aware of the effects of both amanita muscaria and peyote through the writings of one of his favourite authors. Sir Richard Burton, who recorded the following account of his journey to find the Mormons via the Pony Express route in the 1860s “‘There is another kind of cactus called by the whites “whiskey-root,” and by the Indian “peioke,” [i.e. peyote] used like the intoxicating mushroom of Siberia [i.e. Amanita muscaria]” (Burton, 1862/1977)* “This footnote of Burton’s is particularly interesting because he may have been the first writer to speculate that the effects of the peyote cactus bore some resemblance to the effects of the ‘fly agaric’ mushroom (Amanita muscaria)” (Everitt, 2016).
As well, A. E. Waite’s compendium of Eliphas Levi’s magical writings, ‘Mysteries of Magic’, with which we can be sure Crowley was familiar, makes references to hallucinogenic mushrooms. “In the middle ages, the necromancers… compounded philtres and ointments with the grease and blood of corpses ; they mixed aconite, belladona, and poisonous fungi therewith…[for]…the mesmerism of hallucination…” and also refers to nefarious “philtres” that “extracted the poisonous and narcotic humour from fungi” (Waite/Levi, 1886).
*As quoted in (Everitt, 2016)
As with Edward Kelly, Crowley claimed Levi was one of his previous incarnations, in this case, his most recent one.
Occultist Kenneth Grant, who studied magick under Crowley in 1945, believed it was Golden Dawn member “Allan Bennett… who introduced Crowley to the use of drugs between 1898 and 1899. This Adept of the Golden Dawn had already experienced some of the high spiritual trances by the time Crowley met him” (Grant, 1972). Bennett, who suffered with severe asthma, in search of relief, experimented with all sorts of drugs, and was a bit of an expert on the subject of their use and effects. Crowley wrote that Bennett was known as “the white Knight from Alice Through the Looking Glass. So livable, so harmless, so unpractical! But he was a Knight, too!”*
*From a quote in (Grant, 1972)
“…Bennett… fired Crowley’s imagination with hints of a magical tradition which featured a certain rare drug to ‘Open the gates of the World behind the Veil of Matter’. In the flat at Chancery Lane, where Crowley lived under a variety of aliases and where he entertained voluptuous women, Bennett and he sampled many of the well-known drugs and several ‘strange’ ones as well.” (Grant, 1972)
The Golden Dawn, referred too, was a magical order that Crowley would later find himself in a court battle with after publishing some of their secret writings. It is interesting to note that other famous Golden Dawn members can also be tied to the use of cannabis and other drugs for mystical and magical purposes, prior to Crowley’s own initiation into the magical order, so its use for this purpose was already well established.
The British poet W.B. Yeats, for instance, utilized cannabis as an aid in the development of psychic powers, and explored the effects of mescaline, with peyote given to him by the 19th century drug experimenter, physician and writer on human sexuality, Havelock Ellis, using both drugs in experiments with astral travelling, mind reading and other occult practices.
W.B. Yeats
Yeats is known to have shared peyote with his lover, actress and suffragette, Maud Gonne. “Since Yeats and Gonne were both members of the Golden Dawn when they experimented with anhalonium, it is very likely that rumours of its effects would have spread among some of its members” (Everitt, 2015). (It should however be noted, no love was lost between Yeats and Crowley and a battle within the Golden Dawn saw them at odds.)
The Bookish scholar of magic, Arthur Edward Waite, also a member of the Golden Dawn, included a number of references to cannabis in his ‘Mysteries of Magic’ (1886), described as “a digest of the writing of Eliphas Levi”(Waite, 1886). As Crowley believed himself to be the reincarnation of Levi, we can be sure he was well versed with the contents of this volume. ‘Mysteries of Magic’ potential use with nightshades and opium in witches’ unguents. Waite also included cannabis in his ‘Conditions of Success in Infernal Evocations’ stating that as part of a long and gruesome process “every five days, after sunset, one must get drunk on wine in which five heads of black poppies and five ounces of bruised hemp have been steeped, the whole being contained in a cloth woven by a prostitute, or, strictly, the first cloth at hand may be used, if woven by a woman” (Waite, 1886). Crowley came to wholly despise Waite, referring to him as “Dead Waite” in his Journal Equinox, and the villainous character “Arthwate” in his magical novel Moonchild
Arthur Edward Waite
Dr. William Wynn Westcott 1848-1925
Although it is often argued that the Golden Dawn was a drug free magical order, it should be noted that in secret writing founding member Dr. William Wynn Westcott (1848-1925) specifically referred to the use of cannabis and other drugs for occult purposes. Westcott wrote about drugs, in at least 2 unpublished tracts. These tracts, originally meant as inner teachings and given privately to students of the occult arts, have been published in The Magical Mason: Forgotten Hermetic Writings of William Wyn Westcott, Physician and Magus (Gilbert, 1983). A tract on Dreams recorded the following on opium and hashish:
“Opium gives rise to deep, sound sleep in persons unused to its action, but large doses in persons who have outgrown its soporific effect exhibit the power of causing dreaming in a very exaggerated form: opium eaters dream, and remember dreams, characterised by gorgeous imagery, exalted impressions and boundless grandeur. Students should read the dreams of Thomas de Quincey, the famous author who was an opium eater. Alcoholism on the other hand creates dreams of terror, hatred, malice and suspicion; hauntings by animal forms, by serpents or by insects, and an indescribable terror arising from colours and from horrors of attack by persons who have never been associated with any suspicion of enmity or hostility to the sufferer.””
The Hashish of the Turks and Arabs, prepared from the Cannabis Indica plant, is credited with the power to give rise to dreams of intense pleasure, often of a sexual character; samples of this drug vary very much in quality; some are powerful sedatives, others almost inert; it is a dangerous drug to experiment with. The old medieval magicians taught that dreams of different characteristics would be produced by sleeping in the presence of certain perfumes from incense made from particular herbs, burned on plates of different metals.” (Gilbert/Westcott, 1983)
In a another tract, titled ‘Divination and its History’, Westcott wrote the following:
PHARMAKEIA
“Enchantment by drugs is reckoned among Divinations; medicated compounds were administered internally, either openly or by stealth, to create love and passion, or to cause enmity, or to produce dreams on certain subjects.”
“Leaves of the herb called Moly and of the Laurel, also Jasper stones were worn as amulets to ward off the effects of other charms used maliciously. The Cannabis plant or Indian Hemp was given to produce mystic visions. Enchanted girdles were also supplied by magicians to bestow foresight to the wearer and to keep dangers away from him.”(Gilbert/Westcott, 1983)
Crowley’s own interest in these drugs, were clearly ignited by their magick potential. Writing in his diary in 1901*, Crowley recorded “I think Physical Astral Projection should be preceded by a (ceremonial) ‘loosening of the girders of the soul’. How to do it is the great problem. I am inclined to believe in drugs – if only one knew the right drug”. Crowley clearly found these in mescaline and hashish, as decades later in his exquisite Cabalistic treatise, ‘Little Essays Towards Truth’ he wrote ‘’… such drugs as Cannabis Indica and Anhalonium Lewini [mescaline]do actually ‘loosen the girders of the soul…’” (Crowley, 1939). As shall be noted, this is an analogy Crowley used a number of times to describe his experiences with these substances, and it will be these two which are focussed on in detail in this study.
*reprinted in The Equinox (1.4) (1910)
Ethyl Oxide may also be used in connection with Magical Invocations to loosen the girders of the Soul” (Crowley, 1916). In his paper ‘Ethyl Oxide’ Crowley wrote that to really understand this state, one needs a yogically trained and focussed mind to explore the moments of induction and conclusion of the unconscious state produced by ether. “He should already be expert in Mantra Yoga to the point when, having gone to sleep repeating his mantra, it should spring instantly to consciousness on awakening (either naturally or if disturbed) without any effort of recollection” (Crowley, 1916). Having attained that ability opened up the possibility of registering any new thoughts that may have occurred while unconscious, and even the possibility of following the consciousness into unconsciousness . Crowley wrote that “knowledge on this point might throw light upon:
(a) the psychology of the dying,
(b) the post mortem consciousness, assuming that after bodily death, the individual ‘awakes’ to another form of life….
See Kenneth Grant’s Magick Revival (1972) for more on Crowley’s experimentation with ether, as well as a fascinating account of Grant’s own use of ether for exploring the “astral plane” under Crowley’s direct tutelage in Hastings, England in 1945.
It is clear that Crowley’s experiments with hashish were well under way, within a few years after his initiation into the Golden Dawn and associations with Alan Bennett and George Cecil Jones, as by 1903 he wrote his fascinating essay on cannabis and mysticism, The Psychology of Hashish, although this would remain unpublished till 1909.
In The Psychology of Hashish, Crowley wrote that in his extensive studies into the history of the occult he “found this one constant story. Stripped of its local chronological accidents, it usually came to this–the writer would tell of a young man, a seeker after hidden Wisdom, who, in one circumstance or another, meets an adept; who, after sundry ordeals, obtains from the said adept, for good or ill, a certain mysterious drug or potion, with the result (at least) of opening the gate of the other world. This potion was identified with the Elixir Vitae of the physical Alchemists, or one of their ‘tinctures’ most likely the ‘white tincture’ which transforms the base metal (normal perception of life) to silver (poetic conception)….”(Crowley, 1909). Referring to earlier experiments with cannabis and other substances, and “poisoning” himself with ”every drug in (and out of) the Pharmacopoeia” in search of the above alchemical preparations, Crowley came to believe that this substance was a “sublimated or purified preparation of Cannabis indica”.
In The Psychology of Hashish Crowley indicates a vast knowledge of the esoteric history of the herb, quoting the works of fellow hemp enthusiasts such as Zoroaster the medieval alchemists, the works of members of Paris’ Club des Haschishin and other 19th century literary figures. Unfortunately, he also indicated he was forced into holding back much of this knowledge, due to his association with certain occult groups, who believed that secrets revealed equals power lost. “In order to keep the paper within limits”, he wrote, it would be necessary to keep the article to a scientific nature and use information that was already quite available to the public at large ‘…lest the austerity of such a Goddess be profaned by the least vestige of adornment.”(Crowley 1909).
Unable to openly discuss the esoteric history of the herb, Crowley decided to look at other areas of interest. Having spent some years practicing yoga, ceremonial magick and other techniques of exploring the workings of the mind, as well as studying scientific literature on the subject, Crowley felt confident in discussing the effects of cannabis on the psyche of man. Noting that “Yogis employed hashish… to obtain Samadhi, that oneness with the Universe”, Crowley focussed on cannabis’ ability to invoke different mental states, which he compared to similar states of consciousness associated with meditative and magickal practices.
The first of the Cannabis consciousness states, is termed by Crowley as “The volatile aromatic effect”, which he saw as being marked by an “absolutely perfect state of introspection… of an almost if not quite purely impersonal type”. The next state of consciousness attainable with cannabis, “The toxic hallucinative effect” which begins with thoughts and images passing “rapidly through the brain, at last vertiginously fast. They are no longer recognized as thoughts, but imagined as exterior…. The fear of being swept away in the tide of relentless image is a terrible experience.” Crowley felt the best combatant against this delusional and paranoid state was a meditatively attuned and magickly trained mind, as both these techniques “lead the mind to immense power over its own imaginations”. In the third and final level of consciousness attainable from cannabis, “The Narcotic effect”, “One simply goes off to sleep”. Crowley noted that certain preparations of cannabis seemed to favourably elicit these different states of consciousness even more than dose size did, and believed that the effects themselves may be due “to three separate substances” in the plant, with differing strains and extracts having differing amounts of each. This is interesting speculation decades before the isolation of such active compounds such as THC, and CBD from cannabis.
In relation to his own work and psychological goals, Crowley saw the most desirable of these states of consciousness to lie in the introspective state produced by “The volatile aromatic effect”. Crowley, like other occultists of the time, saw this impersonal introspective state as ideal for the act of astral traveling, and offered instruction in his essay for its experimental practice. More importantly, Crowley saw cannabis as having the potential of aiding the mind in achieve the ultimate state of consciousness referred to by adepts of all ages in which “Ego and non-Ego unite”, and duality, or ego-bound consciousness is transcended and Samadhi is achieved.
Reference to this same state was made by a man who would come to have considerable influence on Crolwey’s masonic interests, John Yarker. John Yarker (17 April 1833 – 20 March 1913) was an English Freemason, author, and occultist. In a 1885 letter to fellow Mason Francis George Irwin, displaying the letter-head ‘Ancient and Primitive Rites of Masonry’ he wrote the following glowing account of the mystical experience he had received under the influence of cannabis:
“My brother brought me from India some Ganja — what the Turks call Eska and the Syrians Hasheesh. Smoked in a cigarette (as I used it) the Indians call it Bhang. It put me into a peculiar dreaming state and I felt myself at one with the Infinite Mind and whatever subject I thought of passed from the particular to the general. If I thought upon the relation existing between Man and Woman, I beheld myself a portion of the Masculine energy of nature… When I thought of any particular subject it seemed to become one with the Universal Mind, and I felt that at that instant I was one with all the rest of Creation that was thinking the same idea… I thought of the origin of evil, I saw bubbles propelled from the one great source, coming into accidental collision, or as departed entities becoming antagonistic. So it was the vegetable and mineral creations, the essence of these seemed to spring from the one eternal source.”
“….It is quite impossible to describe. in writing, the extraordinary nature of this state, but I mentioned it to a Student of the Occult, who has resided in India, and he told me that a Yoga had told him that he used it for the purpose of obtaining Union with the Infinite, and that whilst taking it he willed the purpose that he desired- Freemason John Yarker.
We find a similar association in Hooper and Teresi’s stellar book on the human brain, The Three Pound Universe (1986);
“‘One can look at some religious aphorisms as a form of psychological noise reduction,’ says Charles (Chuck) Honorton, who directs the Princeton Psychophysical Research Laboratories in New Jersey. Purity, poverty, contemplation and so on aren’t just for the sake of piety. These are methods of removing sensory distraction and increasing mental concentration. A good example is Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, composed in the second century B.C. in India. All the practices can be seen as systematic noise reduction, which eventually culminates in samahdi, a transcendental state in which normal boundaries between the self and others disappears. It may not be dissimilar to what people experience on marijuana when they find themselves staring at the wallpaper for twenty minutes.”
However, in Crowley’s view, this was not a path open to all.
“If hashish-analogy be able to assist us here, it is in that supreme state in which man has built himself up into God. One may doubt whether the drug alone ever does this. It is perhaps only the destined adept who, momentarily freed by the dissolving action of the drug…, obtains this knowledge which is his by right, totally inept as he may be to do so by any ordinary methods”.(Crowley 1909).
Decades later Crowley would write in his autobiography*:
*[The Confessions of Aleister Crowley : An Autohagiography, covers Crowley’s life up until the mid-late 1920s but does not include the period between then and his death in 1947. The first part of the book was published by Mandrake Press in two separate volumes under the title ”The Spirit of Solitude” in 1929. The larger book did not get published until over 20 years after his death in 1969.]
“In 1903… I wrote… The Psychology of Hashish… [it]pleases me more every time I read it. It contains such a wealth of knowledge, it shows such profundity of thought, that I find myself today still wondering how I ever wrote it. I find in it ideas which I am hardly aware that I possess today; how I could have thought thus at this elementary stage of my career, and written it all down in a single day, is bewildering. It is completely free from any blemishes of the old type. The sublimity of my subject possessed me.” (Crowley, 1969)
Another interesting publication from Crowley in 1903, was his little referred to play ‘God Eater: A Tragedy of Satire’, and it as well mentions hashish. With God Eater’s Egyptian themes, and other elements, this curious, distasteful and hard to understand play also seems to foreshadow, the coming of his pivotal text composed, or rather allegedly “channeled” the next year, The Book of the Law. “In the play, a human victim is killed, mummified, displayed, and reverted as a god by her followers. This ceremony parodies the story of Jesus’ resurrection, and it also paints Christianity as a religion that worships and celebrates death, rather than the beauty of life” (Lingham, 2014)
As one review described the play “…So far as we can understand the story, which is almost unintelligible, it is about a brother who seeks to found a new religion, of which his younger sister shall be the goddess, and, in order to achieve that end, stabs her and eats her heart. It is simply loathsome and horrible.”
—The Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 20 November 1903.
God Eater, gives a clear description of the use of hashish in ritual magick, as before committing this heinous act of sacrificial murder, the brother, Criosda, drugs his sister, Maurya, with fumes of hashish from a censer, that also billowed its magick smoke at the beginning of the short play. – “Criosda, taking hashish throws it upon the censer,Maurya comes down the stage and bends over it. Criosda lifts it up and offers it reverently.”
The effects of the fumes, from the description ‘loosen the girders’ of Maurya’s soul….
“Maurya.
…Why, this is strange !
I am losing myself. Criosda !
The wall of the world fall back with a crash.
Where is all this ? I am out of myself : I expand…”
It is in this intoxicated state Maurya is willingly sacrificed by Criosda, this it seems from an earlier reference, is to usher in some sort of new era.
…In the beginning then
The vastness of heaven and earth
Created the idea of God. So Levi* once
Sarcastic in apostsy ; a rebours.
So Muller*, mythopoeic in his mood
Of the unmasking mythopoeia. Now
Profounder science, Spencer’s* amplitude,
Allens’s* to shallow erudition, Frazer’s*
Research, find men have made —since men made aught—
Their Gods, and slain, and eaten, Surface ! I,
Croisda of the Mist, see truth in all
Rather than truth in one. Below the rite,
The sight ! beyond the priest, the power ! Above
The sense, the soul ! So men who made their gods
Did make in very deed : so I will make
In uttermost truth a new god, since the old
Are dead, or drunk with wine, and soma-juice
And hemp and opium !…
*Eliphas Levi seminary drop-out turned magician; Max Muller, Orientalist and writer on comparative religion; Herbert Spencer, philosopher, anthropologist and an early proponent of evolutionary theory; James George Frazer author of the classical work on comparative mythology The Golden Bough; Allen, not sure????
This verse is important in considering Crowley’s “inspiration” and possible motivation for The Book of the Law, composed the next year, and its own themes of the dying aeons of the Egyptian deities Isis and Osiris, representing the matriarchal and patriarchal periods of religious domination perspectively, to make way for the new God, Horus who is composed of elements of both.
Undeniably, the most important of all of Crowley’s esoteric writings is his short and mysterious The Book of the Law, aka Liber Al. Crowley produced the book in Cairo during 1904, well he was travelling with his first wife. He claimed the text was channeled by an unseen entity known as Aiwass… I claim that both Crowley and his wife, Rose, who aided in the transmission, were likely stoned out of their gourds during the process of this magical operation! A theme that other researcher’s have also expressed. “ Hashish was probably used during the actual writing of Liber Legis [The Book of the Law], as it was later used to facilitate the writing of Liber 7 [Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli]” (Everitt, 2016)*.
*Everitt, also suggests the additional use of peyote in this context, which is more clear with the later Liber 7, as shall be discussed.
This is a view that has been shared by other researchers as well, such as Timothy Wyllie and George Pendell:
“After Crowley had experienced some intriguing synchronicities following a magical rite invoking Thoth, for which he was doubtless well stocked with excellent hashish, he came to believe he was hearing the disembodied voice of his ‘Holy Guardian Angel,’ Aiwass. He spent the next few days taking dictation from Aiwass, and from this emerged his most seminal work, The Book of the Law” (Wyllie, 2014)
“Crowley married his first wife, Rose Kelly, in 1903. He dubbed her his Scarlet Woman, a term he used for women who acted as his spiritual mediums. Rose travelled with him to Cairo in 1904…
Once there, Rose fell into a hashish-induced trance and announced to Crowley that Horus—the falcon-headed god of ancient Egyptian mythology—was waiting for him. rose told him that he was to go to the temple he had constructed in their Cairo apartment for his magic rituals. Crowley obeyed his wife’s commands and, according to his own account, in the temple he heard a man’s voice begin to speak from over his shoulder. Crowley wrote down every word the voice said, and by the time it had finished speaking, he had written what he entitled The Book of the Law.” (Pendle, 2006)
Crowley claimed that Liber Al, i.e. The Book of the Law, signalled the dawning of a new age, the “Aeon of Horus”, and Pivotal from The Book of the Law, is the term “Thelema” which Crowley felt summarized his philosophy and law of Thelema, “Do what thou wilt”.
Sculpture of Crolwey I did in 2012.
These references themselves are clear indications that The Book of the Law, was composed under the inspiration of hashish. Whether this altered state inspired his poetic sub-conscious or opened him up a spiritual channel to a messenger of Egyptian deities remains an open question. However, the latter requires the belief that Aiwass took time off his duties as messenger of the Egyptian gods during the 16th century to familiarize himself with the works of the mortal Francois Rabelais (1494-1553), from whence these terms originate and where Crowley himself learned them. In Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, there is an Abbey of Thelema, and the Law of Thelema was ‘Do what Thou Wilt’, a motto which hung over the entrance to the Abbey. These terms also give likely indications that cannabis was at work in Crowley’s composition, as this was the favourite herb of Rabelais, and he sung its praises in verse.
Crowley himself acknowledged Rabelais’ influence in an incomplete and unpublished in his lifetime essay, ‘The Antecedents of Thelema’ (1926)*;
*[Printed in The Revival of Magick, edited by Hymenaeus Beta & R. Kaczynski}
“IT HAS BEEN remarked by some critics of the Law of Thelema that the words “Do what thou wilt” are not original with the Master Therion: or, rather, with Aiwass, who uttered to the scribe Ankh-f-n-khonsu, the priest of the princes, The Book of the Law.
This is true enough, in its own way: we have, firstly, the word of St. Augustine: “Love, and do what thou wilt.”
This is however, as the context shows, by no means what is meant by The Book of the Law. St. Augustine’s thesis is that if the heart be full of Love, one cannot go wrong. It is, so to say, a rider upon the theorem of St. Paul’s thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians.
Far more important is the Word of Rabelais, Fais ce que veulx [Fr. “Do what thou wilt”]. The sublime Doctor does indeed intend, so far as he goes, to set forth in essence the Law of Thelema, very much as it is understood by the Master Therion himself. [one of Crowley’s magickal titles] The implications of the context are significant.
Our Master makes the foundation of the Abbey of Thelema the quite definite climax of his history of Gargantua; he describes his ideal of Society. Thus he was certainly occupied with the idea of a new Aeon, and he saw, albeit perhaps dimly, that Fais ce que veulx was the required Magical Formula” (Crolwey, 1926)
Crowley felt that Rabelais’ work not only foreshadowed the coming of the Book of the Law, and the dawning of the Aeon of Horus, his hubris was so great that he believed the medieval French author even predicted Crowley’s own arrival as its Prophet!
“Was the mighty spirit of Alcofribas Nasier* aware of the prophetic fire of his immortal book?
He has fortunately left us in no doubt upon this point… he indicates the Master Therion by name! The very last verse of his oracle runs thus:
O qu’est a reverer
Cil qui en fin pourra perseverer!
[How praiseworthy he]
[Who shall have perserved even unto the end!]
He who is able to endure unto the end, he insists, is to be blessed with worship. And what is this I will endure unto the end but PERDURABO*, the magical motto at his first initiation of the Master Therion?” (Crolwey, 1926)
*[an anagram for Francois Rabelais, used by both Rabelais in reference to himself and Crowley in reference to Rabelais] **[another one of Crowley’s magical titles]
As OTO member Bill Heidrick, noted in the 1995 Thelemic Lodge Calendar of this situation in his article on the connections between Crowley and Rabelais:“It’s widely known that Rabelais said “Do what thou wilt”, used Thelema and employed an Abbey of Thelema in his Gargantua and Pantagruel four centuries before Liber AL. The old Hell Fire Clubs continued that tradition through variation into the late 18th century. For some, this becomes a question of Crowley faking it. For others, it is more a matter of observing a gradual development of Thelema through the half millennium preceding the Aeon of Horus. In any event, Crowley was equipped to “hear” the word when Aiwass communicated” (Heidrick, 1995).
Clearly, Rabelais played a major role in Crowley’s occult philosophy. In Liber XV, the Gnostic Mass (1915) Rabelais is depicted as a saint, and in the Beast’s classic Magick in Theory and Practice (1912-13)* he wrote “The Works of Francois Rabelais. Invaluable for Wisdom”
*published in The Equinox, Voume 1, no.8
The question of how Crowley was equipped to “hear” the word of Aiwass, also brings us back to Rabelais. In relation to Rabelais, it is important to note that this medieval monk and bachelor of medicine was more than a little familiar with the use of hemp, and he esoterically revealed his vast hempen knowledge in a number of chapters on the “herb Pantagruelion” in his humorous parody of the grail myth contained in Gargantua and Pantagruel.
Crowley would certainly have also been aware of the association via Richard Burton’s A Plain and Literal Translation of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, (1885), which he read as a student at Cambridge. Undoubtedly he would have noted Burton’s comment identifying Pantagruelion with hashish, as well as his brief but educated overview of the drug’s history. As well, Crowley was known to have acquired and read many classics in this period of his life, and it in this same period that he would have read the works of Rabelais. As Burton noted:
“The Arab “Banj” and Hindú “Bhang” (which I use as most familiar) both derive from the old Coptic “Nibanj” meaning a preparation of hemp (Cannabis sativa seu Indica); and here it is easy to recognise the Homeric “Nepenthe.” Al-Kazwini explains the term by “garden hemp (Kinnab bostáni or Sháhdánaj). On the other hand not a few apply the word to the henbane (hyoscyamus niger) so much used in mediæval Europe. The Kámús evidently means henbane distinguishing it from Hashish al haráfísh” = rascals’ grass, i.e. the herb Pantagruelion. The “Alfáz Adwiya” (French translation) explains “Tabannuj” by “Endormir quelqu’un en lui faisant avaler de la jusquiame.” [Asleep someone making him swallow henbane]. In modern parlance Tabannuj is = our anæsthetic administered before an operation, a deadener of pain like myrrh and a number of other drugs. For this purpose hemp is always used (at least I never heard of henbane); and various preparations of the drug are sold at an especial bazar in Cairo. See the “powder of marvellous virtue” in Boccaccio, iii., 8; and iv., 10. Of these intoxicants, properly so termed, I shall have something to say in a future page.”
“The use of Bhang doubtless dates from the dawn of civilisation, whose earliest social pleasures would be inebriants. Herodotus (iv. c. 75) shows the Scythians burning the seeds (leaves and capsules) in worship and becoming drunken with the fumes, as do the S. African Bushmen of the present day. This would be the earliest form of smoking: it is still doubtful whether the pipe was used or not. Galen also mentions intoxication by hemp. Amongst Moslems, the Persians adopted the drink as an ecstatic, and about our thirteenth century Egypt, which began the practice, introduced a number of preparations to be noticed in the course of The Nights.” (Burton, 1885)
Interestingly, as shall be discussed Crowley would find reason to esoterically refer to Rabelais in relation to cannabis in future writings.
Further evidence of potential cannabis references can be found elsewhere in the text, including this request from the Queen of Heaven” if under the night-stars in the desert thou presently burnest my incense before me, invoking me with a pure heart, and the Serpent flame therein , thou shalt come a little to lie in my bosom…”.
In his later magical diaries, Crowley identified hashish with the sacred incense of the pharaohs’ kyphi, “KYFI” , and blamed lack of it for his inability to see visions of elementals in a magical operations during 1910-11. The ingredients of the original Kyphi have been lost to the ages, although cannabis has long been and still is suggested as an ingredient. Ancient inscriptions and references to it, indicate its importance. In Crowley’s own time, Occultist Oliver Bland* (1920) suggested cannabis was an ingredient in the Egyptian Kyphi incense, and suggested the modern term for hashish kief or kiff, was a carryover from this, so this may have been a popular notion of occultists of this period.
Oliver Bland, was the pseudonym of Major Hugh Bertie Campbell Pollard (1888-1960) an M16 operative and an alleged associate of Aleister Crowley. His Secrets of Occultism contains a chapter on cannabis.
Interestingly, in the numerology of the Kabala, which Crowley deeply adhered to, the value of the name of the angel which channeled The Book of the Law to Crowley, Aiwass, is 93, has the same value as the word “incense”, (see Crowley’s 777) and in Cabalistic logic, this indicates a correlation.
Crowley wrote how the use of this incense kindled “the Serpent flame therein”. The serpent symbolism, is used in reference to the serpent like kundalini energy, as the use of cannabis and other intoxicants as aids in raising the kundalini energy, are as old as the concept of kundalini itself. The serpent imagery is used again elsewhere in The Book of the Law in reference to intoxicants; “I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight and bright glory and stir the hearts of men with drunkeness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, & be drunk thereof !…”.
In a 1912 edition of The Equinox (Volume 1, number 7) Crowley confirmed the above Liber Al reference to the “snake” as indicating the kundalini energy, which he saw as “the central magical force in man” and further noted that the “privilege of using wine and strange drugs has been confirmed; the drugs were indeed revealed.”
As well in the closing comment in the second of The Book of the Law’s three small chapters, Crowley recorded the following curious comment “There is an end to the word of the God enthroned in Ra’s seat, lightening the girders of the soul’’. In his essay Psychology of Hashish, which he claims to have written prior to The Book of the Law, he notes that ‘’Perhaps hashish is the drug which ’loosens the girders of the soul’.’’ This phrase is borrowed from works attributed to the Persian mage Zoroaster*, who used bhang (cannabis) in order to receive revelations from his god Ahura Mazda (Bennett, 2010).
*[The girders of the Soul, which give her breathing, are easy to be unloosed.] W. Wynn Westcott, The Chaldæan Oracles of Zoroaster (1895)
Now this of course raises the question as to if Crowley was inspired by hashish to write The Book of the Law, then why would he not have declared so? As we shall see he articulated in writings not long after composing The Book of the Law, as too why he might have reasons not too.
Crowley really got to work with hashish in 1906, as described in his magickal diary from that year, which holds a number of interesting references. He recorded in May of that year “Reading the Hashish-eater, a wonderful book. Sleeping, I got a mild hashish dream!… That book is clearly bewitched.”
Crowley continued to work with hashish throughout 1906, and as Lawrence Sutin has aptly noted in Do What thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley, the Great Beast utilized hashish in his Augoeides Invocations as recorded in his diary notes, although curiously, this fact was omitted in later published accounts of the event. But as Sutin has shown, there is “an account of the role of hashish on the night of October 9, 1906, when Crowley felt himself at last (after some thirty-four weeks) to have completed the Abra-melin operation and to have attained the Knowledge of the Augoeides, his Holy Guardian Angel.” (Sutin, 2014) This was a pivotal moment in Crowley’s career as a mage.
“In the Sanskrit language of Hindu yoga, Crowley termed his experience that night and ‘Atmadarshana’ or ‘Vision of the universal Peacock’ in which there is ‘consciousness of the entire Universe as One, and as All, in Its necessary relation to Itself in and out of Time and Space.’ This Atmadarshana was soon supplanted by a ’Shivadarshana,’ or ‘Vision of the Destruction of the Universe, the Opening of the eye of Shiva’ which destroys the split consciousness of self and other.” (Sutin, 2014)
Crowley diary records his use of hashish the Night of October 9th, when these visions occurred, although from what he wrote, he was to incapacitated from the potent effects of the resin to record much at the time.
“Hashish 10. p.m. acting — taken at 8. Many very strange illusions of sight, sense of proportion, locality, illusions of muscular distortion, the pen actually writing good legible English, but appearing to do so only as of two counterpoises. (Hours to write that sentence — and this) None of the illusions seriously interfere with small fine coordinated movements. I think of a word and forget it before I can write it down. This happens by lapses: a question of attention held and released.” , (Crowley, Oct. 9, 1906)
Despite the lack of entries from later that night, we can be sure he found success with this method, as the next day he recorded. “I am still drunk with Samadhi all day.” (Crowley, October 10, 1906)
However, as Sutin notes, Crowley had some hesitancy and doubt about the reality of this hashish induced experience, and as Crowley himself noted :
“Remember how close to Samadhi the ritual brought me… I did get rid of everything but the Holy Exalted One, and must have held him for a minute or two. I did. I am sure I did…. But the hashish enthusiasm surged up against the ritual-enthusiasm; so I hardly know which phenomena to attribute to which.” (Crowley, Oct. 10, 1906)
Crowley seems to have pondered on whether Samadhi with hashish, was a genuine form of that state of consciousness. As Crowley noted of an experiment with hashish, a month later “Samadhi is Hashish, an ye will; but Hashish is not Samadhi (it’s a low form this Atmadarshana.) (I don’t and didn’t quite understand this. I think it means that only an Adept can use Hashish to excite Samadhi; or else that Hashish is the evil and averse Samadhi.)” (Crowley November 27, 1906)
Crowley was under the inspiring influences of hashish when he came up with the cover design for his 1907 book Konx Om Pax’. “the ceremonial debauchery of the Pagan worships was a true mystical process. Indeed, at this day there are many cults in India (also, I believe, in the South Seas) of what is called Vamacharya. Religious frenzy is invoked by the aid of the Erotic and Bacchic frenzies mingled with that of the Muse of the Tom-Tom. Soma, bhang, arraq, and the Uniting of the Lingam and the Yoni! All, mind you, by a most elaborate ritual. – The Philosopher’s Stone, in Konx Om Pax
Crowley’s 1906 experiments with hashish, were followed a few years later by the 1909 publication of The Equinox: The Review of Scientific Illuminism, and the first four editions of Volume 1 of The Equinox, contained a variety of articles about hashish. under the series title, THE HERB DANGEROUS.
‘The Herb Dangerous’ included, a technical article on the drug and its uses and effects, ‘The Pharmacy of Hashish’. By E. Whineray*, M.P.S.. Crowley’s own English translation from the French of ‘The Poem of Hashish’, by Charles Baudelaire, and Selections illustrating the Psychology of Hashish, from The Hashish-Eater. By Fitz Hugh Ludlow, and Crowley’s own extensive essay, which he wrote in 1903, ‘The Psychology of Hashish’, “With an attempt at a new classification of the mystic states of mind known to me, with a plea for Scientific Illuminism.”
*[Pharmacist Edward Whineray, who contributed other articles to The Equinox, was an important connection for Crowley in acquiring exotics substances. “Crowley visited Whineray for years to procure magical necessities, such as ingredients and perfumes for incenses as well as hashish. Presumably Whineray also supplied Crowley with anhalonium [mescaline]”. (Everitt, 2015)
Although Crowley later wrote that he composed ‘The Psychology of Hashish’ in 1903, it seems pretty clear from some of the descriptions in it, he must have revised it a little after his 1906 experiments with the drug. This is indicated in the references to the state of Samadhi and his concerns about whether Samadhi achieved under the influence of hashish identified the legitimate attainment of that state. However it should also be noted that concern over the legitimacy of drug induced revelation, may have made its way into Crowley’s 1903 play, God Eater, which as we have seen incorporated the use of hashish incense.
“Shadowy influence
Of smoke ! Where lies its physiologic act ?
What drug conceals the portent ? Mystery !
Mystery ninefold closed upon itself
That matter should move mind — Ay !…”
Such concerns likely also account for hashish not being part of the official story line regarding the composition of The Book of the Law. Crowley himself wrote “Certain very serious questions have arisen with regard to the method by which this Book was obtained. I do not refer to those doubts—real or pretended—which hostility engenders, for all such are dispelled by study of the text; no forger could have prepared so complex a set of numerical and literal puzzles[…]” (Crowley, 1936)
Having both his claims of Samadhi and his premier magical document The Book of the Law, being written off as being the ramblings and delusions of a drug addict, may also account for Crowley’s use of the Pseudonym Oliver Haddo in the publishing of ‘The Psychology of Hashish’.
Oliver Haddo was a character loosely and unfavourably based on Crowley in the Somerset Maugham Novel, The Magician (1908). Possibly in part inspired by Crowley’s grim play, God Eater, Haddo, in Maugham’s novel, endeavours to seduce, and then murder a young virgin, so that with her blood he might bring life to homunculus in his alchemical laboratory. In Maugham’s tale Haddo is described “A legend grew around him, which he fostered sedulously, and it was reported that he had secret vices which could only be whispered with bated breath. He was said to intoxicate himself with Oriental drugs, and to haunt the vilest opium-dens in East of London.” (Maugham, 1908) and again “old rumours followed him that he took strange oriental drugs. He was supposed to have odious vices, and people whispered to one another of scandals that had with difficulty been suppressed.” (Maugham, 1908)
These comments identify just the sort of concerns about his reputation Crowley had already expressed. In answer to Maugham’s comments, Crowley wrote a critique of ’The Magician’ in Vanity Fair, ‘How to Write a Novel! (After W. S. Maugham)’, shortly after its publication, also using the pen-name Oliver Haddo, in which he convincingly accused Maugham of plagiarizing a variety of magical texts, such as virtually verbatim passages from Eliphias Levi’s Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, and Golden Dawn Leader MacGregor* Mathers’ Kabbalah Unveiled along with themes from a number of popular novels of the day. “Well, Maugham had had his fun with me; I would have mine with him. I wrote an article for Vanity Fair (December 30th, 1908) in which I disclosed the method by which the book had been manufactured and gave parallel passages… it was the most damning exposure of a literary crime that had ever been known. No author of even mediocre repute had ever risked his reputation by such flagrant stupra.” (Crowley, 1969)
*Ironically Crowley himself not long after this, found himself embattled with MacGregor Mathers when he published many of the secrets of The Golden Dawn in his own magical journal The Equinox.
In 1926, The Magician was adapted into a silent film by Rex Ingram, and in a scene influenced by Haddo/Crolwey’s use of “oriental drugs” , Haddo asks the female lead of the film, “If you wish to see strange things I have the power to show them to you” and them issues them in with vapours from a cauldron, inducing visions of a Pagan orgy led by Pan!
Poster for ‘The Magician’ (1926), with a sinister bowl of incense burning at the right.
Haddo’s vision inducing Fumes in ‘The Magican’ (1926)
The Vision of Pan, produced by intoxicating fumes
Haddo’s alchemical laboratory
Around the same time as the publication of The Psychology of Hashish, Crowley released another work containing references to cannabis, here for its use for astral projection, and again, under a pseudonym. The Book of erotic and magical poems ‘Clouds Without Water’ , gives us a classic example of both Crolwey’s esoteric ways and his deep sense of humour. Appearing as a concerned and condemning critique from a pious Reverend Charles Verey, of book of erotic poetry filled with magical symbolism and references to drugs written by an anonymous college professor who was joyfully caught up in a scandalous affair with one of his female students, the whole volume was in fact penned by Crowley. Upon publication, the mischievous Beast circulated the book to a number of ministries and teaching colleges under the guise of a warning of the type of satanic hedonism that the young were being exposed too, and all this with the shrillest and pious of Christian voices, via Reverend Charles Verey. The text includes the following reference to the magical use of ‘Cannabis’:
As one entranced by dint of cannabis*,
Whose sense of time is changed past recognition,
Whether he suffer woe or taste of bliss,
He loses both his reason and volition.
He says one word— what countless ages pass!
He walks across the room— a voyage as far
As the astronomer’s who turns his glass
On faintest star-webs past the farthest star
And travels thither in spirit. So
It seems impossible to me that ever
The sands of our ill luck should run so low
That splendidly success should match endeavour;
Yet it must be, and very soon must be:
For I believe in you, and you in me.
*Cannabis.— Indian hemp, a drug producing maniacal intoxication. (Crowley, 1909)
Considering the strong role it played in his magickal techniques, it is curious to note that after Crowley wrote ‘The Psychology of Hashish’ there are but a few scattered direct references to cannabis in his published writings. In later writings, with Passage of The Dangerous Drug Act in 1920*, which made many of Crowley’s magical activities with hashish, peyote extracts and other substances illegal, there would have been the incentive of retained personal liberties, to further veil references to such substances.
*[Crowley was an early and staunch anti-prohibitionist and spoke out against this. “In this matter of the Dangerous Drugs Act Parliament seems to have been inspired by ignorance made deeper by the wildest ravings of that class of newspaper which aspires to thrill its readers — if reading it can be called — with blood-curdling horrors” (Crowley, 1922) Crowley felt that “prohibition increased the danger and made the drug-taker a criminal on the bargain” (Grant, 1972).
But, interestingly, there are some veiled esoteric ones, which can be deciphered as well as more explicit diary notes that have been little commented on. With a little cross-referencing it can be shown that cannabis use is at the core of many of this famed magician’s most celebrated occult texts, a fact that many modern Crowley enthusiasts are sadly unaware.
At the time of his 1909 publication John St. John: The Record of the Magical Retirement of G.H. Frater, Crowley was still struggling on whether his experiences with hashish in 1906, constituted a genuine method of spiritual attainment. As Sutin has expressed.
“…Crowley—for all his training in yoga—found it difficult to separate the experience of Samadhi from the influence of hashish…. Crowley adopted the fatalistic teachings of… Ananda Metteyya: One’s attainment is predestined by karma—the turning wheel of existence. Crowley, who believed his own place o have been most fortunate, thus relegated hashish to a tangential role in his attainment of Samadhi… Crowley argued that he could spur attainment of Adonai (a designation for his Holy guardian Angel) through hashish “and the truth of it would have been 5 per cent. drug and 95 per cent. magic; but nobody would have believed me….”[Crowley, 1909, John St. John] He feared public reaction to his use of hashish in this context.” (Sutin, 2014)
This fear may have resulted in the somewhat veiled references to hashish in some of Crowley’s later writings regarding hashish, however, not enough to end his use of cannabis and other substances in ritual magic, but perhaps enough to veil it. Crowley was intrigued enough about other’s experiences with hashish that he wrote a letter (written as by “The Editor of ‘The Equinox‘”) to The Occult Review, Vol X, No. 3, September 1909, where he requested assistance from parties regarding his research into hashish:
S i r ,— I have for some time been preparing a treatise on ” The Herb Dangerous,” i.e. Hashish, Cannabis Indica. From time to time I have seen pictures and drawings on this fantastic subject, and am proposing to illustrate the book with a collection of such drawings. Perhaps any of your readers who have such pictures, or who can give me information on the subject, would be kind enough to communicate with me? I should be very glad, moreover, to receive accounts of any psychic experiences which any of your readers who may have experimented with Hashish, Anhalonium Lewinii, Stramonium, Belladonna, or other drugs can give me. Such communications would be treated as strictly confidential. Thanking you for kind publicity, I am, Sir, Your obliged and obedient servant, The Editor of The Equinox.”
Other substances were also becoming of interest in Crowley’s magical pursuits, notably, anhalonium lewinii, an old name of peyote, taken in extracts. “… [P]eyote was at least vaguely known in some European occult circles as it is referenced in the 5 June 1898 issue of the French esoteric journal Le Voile D’Isis: Journal Hebdomadaire D’Études Ésotériques, edited by the Spanish-born French physician, occultist, and founder of the modern Martinist Order Gérard Encausse (1865 – 1916), also known as Papus. So perhaps Crowley or Bennett heard of peyote either directly or indirectly via La Voile D’Isis” (Everitt, 2016).
Papus, who was included as a Gnostic Saint, in the OTO, an occut organization Crolwey headed, also wrote about the use of drugs for occult purposes.
PAPUS ON DRUGS Gérard Anaclet Vincent Encausse (1865 – 1916), popularly known by his pseudonym Papus, was a key figure in the Martinist revival and “claimed to have several of Saint-Martin’s original notebooks, something that Papus hoped would give some legitimacy to the revival. Papus is also noted as copying part of Cagliostro’s Egyptian Rite from a transcription taken from an original copy” (Harrison, 2017). Papus was the organizer of the “International Masonic Conference” in Paris in, 1908, and besides being the head of the Martinist order, he held memberships in the Theosophical Society, the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn temple in Paris, the Rosicrucian Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix. Theodor Reuss of the Ordo Templi Orientis, also elevated Papus to that order’s 10th degree. Papus also studied material which came from Charles Nodier, and Cazotte. Papus wrote of hashish and other drugs in his Traité élémentaire de magie pratique, ‘Elemental treatise of practical magic’ (1893). “To keep within the limits of our study, we shall only deal here with the following stimulants: alcohol – coffee – tea, morphine, hashish. There are many other substances employed…” (Papus, 1893). HASHISH – OPIUM – MORPHINE “Many people figure for themselves that hashish, fits into the class of the most dangerous drugs on the psychic viewpoint that can be handled and immediately gives sublime visions and plunges the experimenter in Ecstasy. However, thus presented, the action of hashish does answer to nothing of its reality. This substance, as with opium, but is with much more intensity, acts on force reserves of the nervous centres, emptying them in an instant of any reserve, and throws one in masse into the intellectual sphere. Also, ideas are exaggerated, amplified, embellished in a prodigious way: but we still need that the primordial idea and the paramount physical sensation to exist. So a lamp becomes, under the influence of hashish, a magnificent Palace lighten by 10 000 lights and dripping jewels; on the other hand, when the incident idea is vulgar, Impressions are also. So a beginner taking hashish without preconceived idea and waiting for what was going to happen, simply dreamt it was a pipe and that he smoked himself.” “Hashish is an amplifier and not a creator. But this exhilarating action is followed by a terrible reaction: reserve centres, emptied of their contents, agonize the unfortunate imprudent, and most awful nightmares, the most poignant pain are a natural continuation of dreams charm and Astral sensations.” “Opium, which morphine is derived from, has the same action, but with less intensity, and the unfortunate slave of this substance, willing to flee the reaction, which is imminent, gradually increasing the dose of the poison up to complete exhaustion, is soon followed by death.” “Magical standpoint, the danger of these drugs is considerable, since they increase the empire to be impulsive about the willingness and need a good strong will to not to be dominated by these substances, incarnation / embodiment of the soul of the world in matter are key.” “We do not want to unduly lengthen this presentation and we believe that what we have just said will be enough to understand these exciting theory.” (Papus, 1893)* *Translated excerpt by Fr. A.T.A. 11 At least 12 editions of the Martinsit/Masonic journal, L’Initiation, of which Papus was the director of, contained articles on the use of hashish. An 1889 editions included an essay ‘Testament d’un Haschischeen’, from regular contributor, the pharmacist, theosophist and founder of ‘Cannabinology’ Jules Giraud, also know as Numa Pandorac. Giraud wrote about the ability of hashish to “see through the veil of lsis,” and referred to it as the “the guardian angels in jam, the. Patriotism in marmalade, and Providence in compote!” Giraud wrote numerous articles on hashish for various occult journals through the end of the 19th and start of the 20th century. In his ‘Prédictions d´un haschischéen sur le haschisch’ which appeared in a 1905 edition of La Voie, revue mensuelle de Haute Science, he wrote how to take “hashish, [is]to place oneself in the hemp of the Lord, it is not a vulgar drunkenness: it is a retreat, a consultation of a tabernacle, a Eucharistic duty… a noble habit of sacred intoxication, an orphic diathesis” (Giraud, 1905).* A disapproving critic in an 1889 edition of The Theosophist, (Volume 10) wrote of Giraud’s celebration of cannabis and mysticism, The Great Paradoxes of Numa Pandorac, (1888) as “a disgraceful rhapsody on the pleasures of intoxication, by a writer who seems to practice what he preaches.” Excerpted from Liber 420: Cannabis, Magickal Herbs and the Occult
Crowley began experimenting with tinctures or liquid extracts of peyote by at least 1907*, and keeping a scientific record of effects at different dosage levels. By 1910, he had become a bit of an expert in its effects and began introducing it to others. This led to his conception to The Rites of Eleusis, which was a series of initiations directed at ascending the seven classical planetary spheres, also identified with the sephiroth of the Kabalistic ‘tree of life’, thus also representing emotional and intellectual spheres on the body of man, akin to the Hindu concept of chakras.*Research Patrick Everitt suggests it may have been earlier, see his two excellent essays on the subject ‘The Cactus and the Beast: Investigating the role of peyote in the Magick of Aleister Crowley‘ (2016) and ‘‘The Complexities of Aleister Crowley’s Relationship with anhalonium lewinii’ (2014).
“The idea of general rites developed… from the casual rituals adopted during the Anhalonium experiment. When LW [Leila Waddell] and I played and read poetry against each other before the Lord, we got such wonderful spiritual results that we tried to reduce all to a rule” (Crowley, 1914/1998)*
* quoted in (Everitt, 2015)
As researcher Patrick Everitt has noted in his excellent essay ‘The Complexities of Aleister Crowley’s Relationship with anhalonium lewinii’:
“The similarities between Crowley’s private ‘casual rituals’, which apparently produced ‘spiritual results’ even in the most skeptical persons present, and the indigenous use of peyote are intriguing. Crowley seems to have arrived at a similar technique of leading and directing group anhalonium rituals through the use of music and song, much like how peyote is used in traditional shamanistic contexts. Audience members at a semi-private performance of the Rites were given a strange-looking, and even worse tasting, brew to drink. This ceremonial drink is said to have contained fruit juices infused with anhalonium and a twist of opium. Therefore Crowley was not only experimenting with anhalonium on himself, and with his students, but he was also introducing non-occultists and non magicians to its use …At Crowley’s parties, many figures from the occult and literary circles that he moved in were initiated into the use of anhalonium.” (Everitt, 2015)
As with concerns about his attainment of Samadhi be written off as the delusions of a man under the influence of hashish, causing him to hide the fact, Crowley biographer John Symonds and others have noted, Crowley likely veiled the use of peyote extracts, lest people see the “visions and conversations with gods were only mescaline dreams” (Symonds, 1958). “Apparently Crowley thought that, within occultist discourse, it was less controversial to declare yourself the Beast of Revelation than it was to write about your own use of an ancient visionary plant sacrament as a method of spiritual attainment” (Everitt, 2016).
“It certainly seems that Crowley deliberately concealed some details of his magical operations and included misleading information in his diaries to mask ceremonial drug use. He is even more likely to do so if the operation was especially important and he thought it might be dismissed as a drug-induced hallucination if he mentioned anhalonium use.” (Everitt, 2015)
Liber VII, Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli, is identified as “the Birth Words of a Master of the Temple”, which Crowley linked with the experience he called “Shivadarshana”, a state as we saw earlier, he first attained under the influence of hashish. In this text, Crowley again gives us esoteric references to cannabis and indications that this is the drug which ‘’loosens the girders of the soul’’ as well as indications of anhalonium lewinii for this same purpose ;
“By the burning of the incense was the word revealed and by the distant drug.. These loosen the swathings of the corpse; these unbind the feet of Osiris…’’
In the 19th and early twentieth century, various preparations of cannabis were used by occultists for astral travelling, so Crowley was far from alone in his use of this technique. The reference to Osiris are of interest, in that this is the first of the Egyptian Gods channeled in Liber Al, the Book of the Law. This passage also brings to mind the earlier references to ‘loosening the girders of the soul’ in relation to these substances
from the above passage in Liber VII we can decipher that he felt another intoxicants besides cannabis, could also aid in the unbinding from the material world. The “distant drug” is likely an esoteric reference to mescaline. In this respect Everitt notes that “in 1910 Crowley initiated the English writer and occultist Roland Meredith Starr [pen name of Herbert H. Close](1890 – 1971) into the practice of astral projection by the use of peyote. Therefore Crowley clearly considered the ceremonial use of peyote a valuable precursor to astral projection, although he never explicitly asserted this in his writings. He merely hinted…” (Everitt, 2016).
Elsewhere in Liber VII, Liber Liberi vel Lapidis Lazuli, at the height of his cannabis induced voyages into the psychic realm and quite obviously indicative of his inspiration source, Crowley recorded ‘’I am Gargantuan great; yon galaxy is but the smoke-ring of mine incense, Burn Thou Strange Herbs, O God!’’ The reference to Gargantuan here can be seen as a tribute to Rabelais, and his first book Gargantua, as the term still in use, is derived from the name of the main character in Rabelais’ classic, the giant Gargantua. In fact Crowley uses this term again in a direct reference to both cannabis’ and mescaline’s ability to make one laugh at oneself in his later ‘Little Essays Towards Truth’; ’
“…such drugs as Cannabis indica and Anhalonium Lewinii, which do actually ‘loosen the girders of the soul which give her breathing,’ cause immediate laughter as one of their most characteristic effects.”:
“Oh the huge contempt for the limiting self which springs from the sense of Gargantuan disproportion perceived in this Laughter! Truly it slays, with jolliest cannibal revels, that sour black-coated missionary the serious Ego, and plumps him into the pot. Te-he!–the Voice of Civilization—The Messenger of the white Man’s God–bubble, bubble, bubble! Throw in another handful of sage, brother! And the sweet-smelling smoke rises and veils with exquisite shy seduction the shameless bodies of the Stars!”(Crowley 1939)
The line about throwing on another handful of sage is reminiscent of a 1910 account recorded in Crowley’s unpublished Diary notes. Crolwey’s diary notes described a London rooftop experiment, that included Victor Neuberg, Charles Stansfeld Jones and Leila Waddell, all of whom would become important figures in the life of the Beast, where “Dried tops [of]Cannabis Indica [were]thrown on glowing prepared charcoal” for the group to inhale. This event must have taken place in what would have been a very smokey room, as eventually Crowley “opened the window for fresh air”. Indicating that mescaline containing extracts were also used around this same period, as Everitt (2016) has noted, the diary recorded, Neuburg sees colours “different to anhalonium” [mescaline].
In 1908, Crowley wrote a short story ‘The Drug’, which has generally thought to have been a fictionalized account of his experiences with anhalonium lewinii. ‘The Drug’ tells the tale of a man visiting a friend, who he had no idea was dabbling in the magical arts, till a door he had thought was a cupboard, was opened, revealing an alchemical laboratory, full of glass and silver viles and bottles, along with all sorts of lab equipment.
His friend, who had to reveal his secret during their weekly game of chess, in order to take care of a timely operation in his hidden lab, shows him a vile filled with a strange liquid and asks
“why should you not become… partaker of the mysteries of the creation?…Come drink my friend! It is the drug that giveth strange vision.’”
Overcome with curiosity the hero of the tale takes the vile and drinks, and then reports a “dawning vistas of strange visions.”
“Vast was the concave of the orb of light wherein I found myself. The light was of a cool, early green, filtered through dew and reflected by flowers. A soft alluring scent was in the air; and a ripple as of slow, invisible waters.
A tide of happiness and expectation played in my soul like the wind in the branches of an oak, making delicious music. Yet… sudden fits of weeping shook me. But one dream with another, the scene was inexpressibly delightful.
…Pleasure and pains alike had no obvious source; their functions and purpose were still more obscure. The question even arose: Are all these phenomena detached? Or, in a word, Am I insane?”
The hero proceeds onto a heaven and hell like journey, which culminates into a scenario reminiscent of the monolith and ape scene in 2001 A space Odyssey and the psychedelic induced de-evolution into a monkey man of the protagonist in Altered States*:
*[The film Altered States was a fictional account based on the real work of Dr. John Lilly involving psychedelic drugs and deprivation tanks.]
“Beauty had almost vanished; harmony was clean gone; the one thing desirable yet was a certain rod of iron that hung above me. This I aspired to; this was alike my fear and desire.
For I feared that it might come whirling through the air and destroy me — unless I could reach up to it – grasp it – make it mine.
So thereunto I strove.
And behold I found myself sitting in a great concourse of monkeys. whose jabber deafened every other sound. Six hundred and sixty-nine there were, and I among them, I one of them.
Yet even so I strove. I aped their cunning, their avarice, their folly, in the end I became head of them.”
Coming too from the experience, he asks his friend if he had named this elixir death?
“‘Nay!’ he answered, with grave sorrow in his eyes, ‘methinks its name is Life.’”(Crowley, 1908)
“…the drug that giveth strange vision” illustration from ‘The Drug’
As Patrick Everitt has noted, Crowley worked references to peyote into other short stories as well, such as the 1910 tale ‘The Eyes of St. Ljubov’*, in which the drug enables a blind woman to see, and the unpublished fictional work Not the Life and Adventures of Sir Roger Bloxam, composed between 1916-17, that contains the line “if my reader will to whirl in colour and form, let him quaff mescal to the glory of Quetzlcoatl, and it shall not fail him. Anon” (Crowley, 1917)**
*Equinox, 1.4 (1910)
**As quoted in (Everitt, 2016).
Crowley also incorporated hashish into his fictional tales as well, such as his that of his metaphysical detective series, Simon Iff, written under the pseudonym of one of his claimed previous incarnations, Edward Kelly: “This is pretty good dawamesk,” said Simon Iff in Arabic to
the big white-bearded Sheikh who acted as Patriarch to Ouled
Djellal. (Dawamesk is a preparation of hashish, or The
Grass, as the Arabs call it.) They were seated outside the
little inn which is the principal building of the village.
“Abu’dDin,” returned the Arab, (for Simon Iff was known all
over the desert by this title of “Father of Justice,” Din
meaning Truth, Law, Faith, but above all Justice.)
“It is good dawamesk. It is made in Djelfe by a wise and
holy man who can balance himself upon one thumb, o thou who
also art most wise and holy!”
“It is indeed The Grace, o Father of Lions, and I am
refreshed in my spirit by its soft influence. Allah is
munificent as he is great.”
“There standeth no man before His face,” returned the
Sheikh, “and not by dawamesk alone, though it be one-third
hashish, shall man behold his glory.”
“Nay, but by right intentness, with an holy life.”
“But hashish doth indeed assist us who are weak in soul, and
whose lives are defiled with iniquity.”
In 1915 Crowley stopped by Parke-Davis in Detroit, who were happy to do business with him. “[They] were kind enough to interest themselves in my researches in Anhalonium lewinii (peyote) and made me some special preparations on the lines indicated by my experience which proved greatly superior to previous preparations.” (Crowley, 1929/1969)
Crowley had planned to include an essay on Anhalonium lewinii and referred to it in a later edition of The Equinox, (Vol 3, issue 1, 1919) but the essay never made it too print. The piece was titled ‘Liber CMXXXIV. THE CACTUS. An elaborate study of the psychological effects produced by Anhalonium Lewinii (Mescal Buttons) compiled from the actual records of some hundred experiments; with explanatory essay’. Sadly, no remaining information on this work exists, and it is believed the records referred to were held and then destroyed by British Customs in 1924.
“Crowley also employed anhalonium during operations of ceremonial magic intended to establish contact with praeterhuman intelligences. In these operations, Crowley would attempt to communicate with such intelligences via the medium-ship of a seer (usually, but not invariably, a female and his lover at the time). Typically both Crowley and his seer would magically exalt themselves and their consciousnesses though an intense combination of ceremonial magic, ritualistic sex, and psychoactive drugs. Then the seer would attempt to ‘scry’, or explore the visionary state, and relay to Crowley the messages of the intelligences. He would then employ some form of magical ‘testing’ to ensure that the intelligence present was friendly and possessed beyond-human knowledge and power. The Ab-ul-Diz working of 1911 and the Amalantrah working of 1918 were both operations of this sort, and the magical results of each were of great significance to Crowley. His magical diaries from these workings survive, and both show that anhalonium was on-hand if necessary for the seer. In fact, in both operations Crowley actually asked the invoked intelligence if the seer should take anhalonium to improve communication. Thus we may safely conclude that Crowley considered anhalonium to be potentially useful in magical operations intended to communicate with praeterhuman entities. Further, he certainly did not dismiss the magical and initiatory significance of the results obtained simply because powerful visionary drugs were involved provided, of course, that the praeterhuman intelligence could prove itself to be such . Nevertheless, whenever Crowley publicly described the Ab-ul-Diz or Amalantrah workings, he never mentioned the use of anhalonium. Therefore, without the information contained in the associated magical diaries, which he never published himself, we would not know of his use of anhalonium at these times. Consequently, it is conceivable that anhalonium was employed in other magical operations of significance and Crowley deliberately omitted this fact from his public account and, potentially, even his private diaries.” (Everitt, 2015)
In ‘The Amalantrah Working’, referred to above, which took place over a number of months in 1918 while Crowley was living in New York, besides the suggested use of mescaline, it would seem copious amounts of hashish were in use. On the auspicious date of April 20th, 1918, Crowley recorded how the participants, under their then magical titles, began out the nights events :
[Saturday] April 20th, 1918 e.v.
8.45 p.m.
10.45 Achitha [Roddie Minor] , Therion [Crowley] and Arcteon [Charles Stansfeld Jones] take 1 cc of Hashish.
11.10 Achitha and Arcteon 1 cc Hashish.
11.30 Achitha and Arcteon 1 cc Hashish.
Each CC signifies a gram of hashish, which is a considerable amount when ingested. Apparently the effects of such high doses sometimes interfered with the concentration needed for magical practice, and C.S. Jones reported of Crowley on another night of hashish fuelled magic. “T[herion]has been taking Hashish — which may account for his ? jokes ?”(Jones, 1918)
Despite this joviality interfering at times, we can see from Crowley’s notes in the magical record, that even after the intervening fifteen years from when he composed The Psychology of Hashish, he was still deeply enamoured with the effects of the drug on the human psyche”
“Hashish brings the subconscious up into the conscious. You see every item of the will. Ordinarily one thought seems as if complete in itself, under hashish you see all the different thoughts that go to make it up. Note the existence of one factor of the mind whose every sensation that comes up it throws into a class by itself, like dividing the sheep from the goats. Like an office, where certain people put things into different pigeon[holes], some judge them.
If you concentrate on any one of these ideas, they cease to become verbal and become pictorial. Thus appreciation of colour is higher in scale of spiritual than reason is.
All the mysteries of creation are really unveiled to one. This is the Shekinah, thoughts like flames in Sunlight. . . . Everything is clear — cause and effect. . . . on every plane, abyss after abyss.
Hashish visions have been considered illusions — nothing of the sort — most true analysis. Hashish produces a moral not a mental insanity by removing the control which keeps all these things silent. It gives a voice to the mob. But each person in the mob is quite right from his own point of view. Each point of view is equally true and equally important, but not important to the state as a whole. The work of the individual is important — but not his idea in doing the work.
A hashish experiment is rather like going slumming — one is amazed by the variety of the vividness of the impressions. And I think this is caused by a Freudian recognition. One sees again the things that used to be familiar in a simpler consciousness — things long since buried — the same thrill as re- visiting one’s childhood. It is therefore a return or a retrogression in mental structure. A degeneration. Thus we see that analysis represents going back and synthesis — advance. ”(Crolwey, 1918)
One of Crowley’s most eloquent and wisdom filled works was also composed this year, Liber Aleph: The Book of Wisdom or Folly, written as an epistle for a man who he at that time saw as his successor – although he would later regret that claim, Charles Stansfeld Jones, who was part of The Amalantrah Working that same year. By that time cannabis had already been a strong influence of the occult relationship of the two, as can be sen in a diary entry from eight years elarlier shared between them which records Jones novice experiences with the herb. ‘an evening on Cannabis indica’ (4 June 1910).
Liber Aleph contains references to both hashish and mescaline, and show that both were important parts of Crowley’s magickal arsenal:
“…with Hashish, Visions phantasmic and enormous; with Anhalonium, Ecstasy of Colour and what not…”
“…Hashish and Mescal… make Images, and they open the Hidden Springs of Pleasure and Beauty.”
Illustration I did that was inspired by Liber Aleph, which I have had a porfund synchronistic experience with.
Unfortunately Liber Aleph would not make it too print till decades later and sometime after Crowley’s death, however an interesting poetic essay on Hashish from its pages, ‘De Herbo Sanctisimo Aribico’, ‘The Most Holy Grass of the Arabs’, was included in The Book of Thoth, much later, near the end of Crowley’s life in 1939. Once again indicating the source of his inspiration, in The Book of Thoth, in a paragraph directly preceding this essay there appears the name Alcofribas Nasier, which with letters re arranged, spells Francois Rabelais. This was an anagram used by the hemp lover Rabelais himself during his controversial lifetime and for the original publication of Pantagruel.
In Liber Aleph: The Book of Wisdom or Folly, this same paragraph, was the closing comment of the text.
“I cry aloud my Word, as it was given unto Man by thine Uncle Alcofribas Nasier, the oracle of the Bottle of BACBUC. And this Word is TRINC.”(Crowley 1939)
In Rabelais’ Pantagruel, ‘Trinc’ is what is written on the Holy Bottle, which was the goal of the tale’s Grail like quest. In his Confessions, Crowley wrote: “the final secret is in the bottle inscribed TRINC.”(Crowley, 1969). In his 1923 Diary notes, for an essay on Rabelais that was never published, Crowley wrote, “Pantagruelion=Elixir or stone: (y) TRINC=ecstasy conferring omnipotence” (Crowley, 1996). He also refers to Rabelais Holy Bottle from which the word Trinc came, in reference to his own use of drugs for divination: “Such is the Omen I bring back from the Oracle of the Bottle” (Crowley, 1996). That he forwarded his essay on hashish, with this sentence about Trinc, leaves little doubt that he saw cannabis, i.e., pantagruelion as this ecstasy producing elixir, and this is further identified in his 1938 poem, “TRINC”, Alcofribas Nasier” that appears to have been dedicated to the artist Robert Winthrop Chanler, and appeared in a collection of Poems under the Title of Temperance, and which makes a clear reference to hashish served in a goblet:
“TRINC”
Alcofribas Nasier
Oh let us bathe and crown our hair
And drink untempered wine!
Let ever greater cups ensnare
Our souls in traps divine.
Soon calms the season of love’s rage,
And joy grows short of breath;
Birth shoots a shaft, weighed down by age,
That strikes the target, death.
Then come, thou golden goblet brimmed
With lust! Though all be vain,
There’s hope for us, the lion-limbed,
In hashish and cocaine.
Though death should hale us by the scruff
Of neck to’s mouldy portal,
To-night let us get drunk enough
To know we are immortal! (Crowley, 1938)
The following piece of esoterica, which we have taken from the beginning of The Most Holy Grass of the Arabs, is steeped with occult symbolism;
‘Recall, O my Son the Fable of the Hebrews, which they brought from the city Babylon, how Nebuchadenezzar the great king, being afflicted in Spirit, did depart from among men for seven years space, eating grass as doth an Ox. Now this Ox is the letter Aleph, and is that Atu of Thoth whose number is Zero, and whose Name is Maat, Truth or Maut, the Vulture, the All-Mother, being an image of our lady Nuit, but also it is called the Fool, who is *Parsifal “der reine Thor”, and so refereth to him that walketh in the way of the Tao. .Also he is Harpocrates, the child **Horus walking upon the Lion and the Dragon; that is ,he is in unity with his own secret nature……….
Here in a few brief words, Crowley gives us a taste of his knowledge and beliefs about his beloved hemp. Notably, Crowley refers to the Egyptian Goddess Maat, whose devotees were reputed to have partaken of a sacramental drink that was comparable to the Indian Soma. As well Crowley begins the essay with a reference to Biblical indications of hemp use by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, whom history has shown to have been a cannabis consumer through the Babylonian “sacred rites”, in which all kings partook and which utilized cannabis. The ritual use of cannabis in ancient Israel and the ancient Mid East has now been firmly established by archeological and etymological evidence. The “Beast” further sees the Biblical analogy to the Ox in the story, as being a cabalistic reference to the Hebrew letter Aleph, which in fact is symbolic of an Ox and whose number is zero. Each of the twenty two glyphs of the Hebrew alphabet has both a number and a symbol attributed to it has Crowley’s comment is seemingly inconsequential to the uninitiated but to those familiar with the Kabala it is loaded with implications.
In Crowleyian view, the number zero, symbolized amongst other things, the number of the perfected initiate, who through rigorous work had undone his view of dualism and construct of personality, has achieved Samadhi and walks in the “Tao”. In the Tarot deck, such an individual is symbolized by the “Fool”, and thus the reference to the “Fool” in Crowley’s esoteric piece of cannabis lore, and its location under the heading of the “Fool”, in Crowley’s explanation of the Tarot, The Book of Thoth.
The Fool card, from Crowley’s The Book of Thoth.
Crowley further relates the cannabis initiate to Parsifal, the hero who restores the the Grail. As well as Horus, a key figure in the earlier Book of the Law, and who symbolizes the same state of unitive consciousness as the Fool, yet in the Book of the Law, Horus is also represented as the figurehead of our own age, when this state of consciousness becomes widespread throughout humanity, instead of achieved by a relatively few adepts. Again from the Book of the Law, we see cannabis in association with the Egyptian sky-goddess Nuit, who, as looked at earlier, commanded that her “incense” be burned in order to kindle “the serpent flame”.
Interestingly, it has been suggested on good evidence that Richard Wagner’s opera ‘Parsifal’ which inspired Crowley and which plays an instrumental role in OTO ritual and myth, was inspired by Wagner’s own use of a cannabis extract and the use of cannabis extracts at performances of his operas, was also known.
The occult essay continues on with Crowley’s admission that” yester Eve came the Spirit upon me that I also should eat the Grass of the Arabians, and by the virtue of the Bewitchment thereof behold that which might be appointed for the Enlightenment of mine Eyes. Now then of this may I not speak, seeing that it involveth the Mystery of the Transcending of Time, so that in One hour of our Terrestrial Measure did I gather the Harvest of an Aeon, and in ten lives I could not declare it.” Despite the professed inability to adequately explain the contents of his vision, Crowley, goes on to describe seeing the “Sun of all being” surrounded by “little crosses”, which churned the Universe into the ‘’Quintessence of Light’’. I would suggest that what Crowley is here referring to is a transformational experience which he referred to elsewhere as the “Vision of the Star Sponge”, or the “Vision of Paequay”, in which Crowley had the experience of becoming a star in the heavens, and from which he took his axiom, “Every man and woman is a star”.
Crowley ended ‘The Most Holy Grass of the Arabs’ with the comment that, ‘a man must first be an Initiate, and established in our Law, before he may use this method’. Crowley is likely here referring to codes of initiation in one of the occult organizations to which he belonged, and this again is also apparent by the veiled nature of his text. As well, this comment indicates Crowley’s belief, stated earlier that drugs alone will not enable the devotee to reach the mystical goal, but also vigorous psychological preparation and study are needed.
As discussed in Liber 420: Cannabis, Magickal Herbs and the Occult, We can be near certain that in the 19th century, some forms of the Rose Croix, Memphis-Misraïm, and Scottish rites branches of Freemasonry, which were claimed to have descended from rites of the Templar knights centuries earlier, there was a drink was partaken of in certain rituals under various names such as ‘the bitter cup’, and it seems likely that at least some forms of this contained drugs. In reference to the Rose Croix degree of the Scottish rites, Charles Nicoullaud recorded in his L’initiation dans les sociétés secrètes: l’initiation maçonnique: “The Rose+Croix [degree]is to the ordinary Master [Mason degree] what a man who is intoxicated on hashish must be to the vulgar drinker who has recreated himself only with the red blood of the vine” (Nicoullaud, 1913). A statement he borrowed from Jules Doinel, founder of Église Gnostique, and an import an figure in the 19th century occult world, and who is known to have incluenced Crowley’s own version of the Gnostic Mass. As Doinel explained: “The Rose-Croix is at the ordinary mason, what the man who has a drunkenness of hashish must be the vulgar drinker who has only been rediscovered with the red blood of the vine.”(Doinel, 1895)
Crowley himself claimed to have undergone such an initiation prior joining the OTO in Chapter XV of Energized Enthusiasm (1913), Crowley describes taking part in a form of the Rose Croix rite in which the High priest “poured out the wine from the flask”:
The High Priestess gave it to the girl attendant, who bore it to all present. This was no ordinary wine. It has been said of vodki that it looks like water and tastes like fire. With this wine the reverse is the case. It was of a rich fiery gold in which flames of light danced and shook, but its taste was limpid and pure like fresh spring water. No sooner had I drunk of it, however, that I began to tremble. It was a most astonishing sensation; I can imagine a man feel thus as he awaits his executioner, when he has passed through fear, and is all excitement.
I looked down my stall, and saw that each was similarly affected. During the libation the High Priestess sang a hymn, again in Greek. This time I recognized the words; they were those of an ancient Ode to Aphrodite… (Crowley, 1913)
Crowley states shortly after: “I became suddenly aware that my body had lost both weight and tactile sensibility. My consciousness seemed to be situated no longer in my body. I ‘mistook myself,’ if I may use the phrase, for one of the stars in the canopy” (1913). One is reminded here of the Crowleyian maxim “Every man and Woman is a Star”. We can be sure that Crowley is referring to the effects of more than just ritual here, and is identifying the use of a psychoactive substance, a note in Crowley’s personal copy of Energized Enthusiasm makes this clear “Anhalonium Lewinnii. The physiologically standardised preparation (Parke, Davies and Co) of Cannabis Indica is also excellent if the administration be in expert hands.”
Another interesting point about Crowley’s alleged Rose Croix initiation is that he refers to the High Priest’s use of the term “Thelema”, which would indicate the use of this Rabelian term outside of his own circle.
As well, in Secret Rituals of the O.T.O., Francis King notes of the Templar degrees and the bitter cup of that quasi Masonic order: “In the O.T.O. ‘31’ normally indicated laudanum [an opium based tincture], at the time the rituals were composed a perfectly legal substance to use, but any bitter drug could be substituted” (King, 1973). Christopher Partridge, has suggested that Crowley used 31, as a code for mescaline, and this is something I have heard from other OTO members. “Because the initials of the drug, ‘A’ and ‘L,’ correspond to Hebrew letters א) aleph) and ל) lamedh), in accordance with gematria Crowley assigned it the number 31: א=1” (Partridge, 2018). Although use of mescaline in this context, may have been inserted by Crowley later, and replaced the laudanum, or possibly other concoctions of hashish, of earlier rituals, the point was it was a psychoactive substance of some kind. Such use was clearly causing a lot of scandal for the O.T.O., a 1922 article in the Detroit Times, makes clear the role of hashish in this regard: “Drugs and their indulgence play an important part in the ritual of the O.T.O., especially ‘hashish’ the exotic drug of the Orient”
This entheogenic initiatory role of drugs in the OTO was recently revisited in a number of scenes in the fictionalized mini-series Strange Angel about OTO initiate Jack Parsons, (1914-1952). That Parsons was experimenting with drugs at this time, is illustrated by a poem he published in 1943 in the OTO’s Oriflamme, which seems to echo similar themes to Crowley’s 1939 poem ‘Trinc’:
I hight Don Quixote, I live on peyote,
marijuana, morphine and cocaine,
I never know sadness but only a madness
that burns at the heart and the brain.
I see each charwoman, ecstatic, inhuman,
angelic, demonic, divine.
Each wagon a dragon, each beer mug a flagon
that brims with ambrosial wine.
Martin Starr’s The Unknown God, also make it clear, that drugs were in use in the early Canadian and American branches of the OTO in to the late 40s at least, as well,not only being used at lodges, he also refers to cannabis being grown by at least one prominent member, and this led to legal problems in that time period as well.
Current OTO literature on the subject records that the “original ritual specified blood and laudanum. The use of either of these substances is [now]against O.T.O regulations for very sound reasons of medical and legal liability. See O.T.O Safety Memorandum, appendix. Bitter substances that work well include Angostura bitters, Fernet Branca, or a mixture of vodka and powdered myrrh”.
A 1920’s diary entry indicates Crowley saw himself as a master of this technique.
“The action of hashish is as varied as life itself and seems to be determined almost entirely by the will or mood of the “assassin” and that within the hedges of his mental and moral form. I can get fantastic visions, or power of mind – analysis, or spiritual exaltation, or sexual excitement of various kinds, or ravenous hunger, or vigor of imagination, whichever I please, absolutely at will, on a minute dose of the Parke-Davis extract. This is simply because I have discovered the theory and perfected the practice of the instrument.” (Aleister Crowley 1920/1972).
clearly, the use of hashish became part of Crowley’s mystique, and as with Maugham’s Haddo, this was a cause of concern for many. A sensational article ‘“Do Anything You Want To Do” -Their Religion and the Trail of Wrecked Homes, Scandals and Troubles Which Have Naturally Followed the Preaching of That Evil Doctrine’ in the March 1922 edition of NEW YORK AMERICAN, recorded that “Crowley knew the method of administering hashish… and he told… how it helped him to ‘control other minds.’ This drug, when mixed with another, possesses the propererty of exciting the passions.”
For this reason, and the rise of prohibition, the use of cannabis and other drugs in his magical workings, was something Crowley would have felt the need to veil somewhat in his later published writings. References to hashish in the 1939 The Book of Thoth, and to both mescaline and hashish in Little Essays Towards Truth published that same year, however, show that these substances, and particularly hashish, played an important role, throughout his whole magickal career.
It should be noted that not all of Crowley experiments with and use of drugs, were fruitful, and his knowledge of their effects came at a high cost. Crowley, like his mentor in the use of drugs, Alan Bennett, suffered from intermittent attacks of asthma and bronchitis, with increasing severity throughout his life. He related these ailments to a disastrous experience Mountain climbing in the Himalayas in 1901, and as a result of this was prescribed heroin in 1919. This medically prescribed use of heroin, and a definite taste for it after that, resulted in an addiction that plagued him on and off throughout his life and is said to have been particularly pernicious in the last years of his life, following him to his death bed*. Besides this medical use, Crowley claimed to have purposely addicted himself to both cocaine and heroes, to test his will power. “I, Baphomet 666, wishing to prove the strength of my will and the degree of my courage have poisoned myself for the last two years and have succeeded finally in reaching a degree of intoxication such that withdrawal of the drugs (heroin & cocaine) produce a terrible attack of the “Storm Fiend”. The acute symptoms arise suddenly, usually on waking up from a nap. They remind me of the “For God’s sake turn it off” feeling of having an electric current passing through one… The psychology is very complex and curious: I think a detailed record of my attempt at breaking the habit will be interesting and useful” (Crowley 1922). Crowley set out to do this in Liber 93: The Fountain if Hyacinth, although his trouble with addiction returned after it was written.
*There is a story that the Doctor seeing him in his last days refused to prescribe him heroin, which Crowley had become re-addicted too, and wanted to ease his discomfort. As a result of the physicians refusal, Crowley was said to have called down a curse on the physician who is related to have followed him to the grave a short time later, although it is difficult to sort the truth from the myth in this account.
“Most of the fixed ideas about drugs are superstitions: I have long observed this fact with regard to a great many. But the more I learn, the larger is the rubbish-heap of accepted statements. For instance, with ether, hashish, mescal, opium-smoking and morphine, I find no tendency to habit whatever. More still, I am unable to force myself to use these drugs at all, except on the rarest occasions. Yet I have nothing but the most pleasant and profitable experiences in connection with them. With heroin and cocaine, on the contrary, I have not much to thank them for; and there has been a good deal of annoyance connected with them. Yet it is for these and these only that I hanker. I begin to have a grave suspicion that there is a masochistic complex at the bottom of it all.” (Crowley, 1922)
Far from seeing his work with psychoactive substances as something new and novel, Crowley rightfully saw such drug induced ritualistic initiation as being part of the ancient mystery schools which had been largely suppressed by the rise of christianity, and the commencement of the Dark Ages. Moreover , Crowley endeavoured to bring about a renaissance of that intentional use as part of the New Aeon of Horus, which he as its Prophet, ushered in.
As Crowley student Kenneth Grant noted “…mastery of these drugs can lead to the acquisition of new states of consciousness and a deepening of character-analysis and introspection unobtainable by other methods, except those pertaining to specialized yogic techniques” (Grant, 1972). The well known and controversial British psychiatrist William Sargant wrote:
“Like sexual techniques, drugs have also been used from time immemorial to induce feelings of possession by gods and spirits, and one of Aleister Crowley’s disciples is entirely in harmony with thousands of years of religious and magical tradition, and too much modern tragedy, when he says that “the only really legitimate excuse for resorting to drugs is the scientific one, i.e., for the acquisition of praeterhuman knowledge and power, which includes poetic inspiration or any other form of creative dynamism.” Poetic inspiration, prophetic power and other forms of ‘creative dynamism,’ whether drug-induced or not, have been regarded in many societies as the result of temporary possession of a human being by a supernatural being or force.” *
“It is a pity that modern proponents of the use of marijuana, L.S.D. and the rest have so seldom inquired into the vast literature of this subject, for the effects produced by various different drugs have been reported time and time again in the past….
“Tantric and other Indian sects ‘have continually resorted to drugs to shift the plane of perception and attain ecstatic states and mystical illumination.’** Drugs, drinks, chemicals and special medicinal preparations were and still are used for this purpose” (Sargant, 1973).
*(Grant 1972)
**(Walker, 1968)
As with the concepts of ‘set and setting’ suggested by later enthusiasts of the psychedelic experience, utilizing cannabis, mescaline and a variety of other substances Crowley would create and perform mythologically imbued occult rituals, which were directed at bringing the devotees closer into contact with higher states of consciousness. He had hopes of perfecting a method, which would make the mystic frame of mind available to humanity at large. This method was the “Scientific Illuminism” he plead for in his classic work ‘The Psychology of Hashish’. As Everitt rightly noted:
Crowley had a theory about the world’s religions. Religious geniuses, such as Moses, Buddha, Christ, and Mohammed, were all relatively unassuming individuals up to a certain point when they suddenly withdrew from society. Following a mysterious period of absence, each returned sufficiently inspired to initiate new religious movements and alter the course of human history. Even ‘in the legends of savages’ similar tales are found:
‘[S]omebody who is nobody in particular goes away for a longer or shorter period, and comes back as the ‘great medicine man’; but nobody ever knows exactly what happened to him.’ [Crowley]*
Crowley speculated that these individuals attained a transformative experience during their retirement from worldly affairs, an experience sometimes called ‘spiritual’, sometimes ‘supernatural’. He labelled this experience ‘Samadhi’, or ‘Union with God’, and argued that there was nothing supernatural about it. It was simply a natural ‘development of the human brain’, albeit a remarkable one that provided access to the ‘secret source of energy’ responsible for genius. He further argued that it could be wilfully attained ‘by the following out of definite rules’. He therefore advocated a scientific investigation into the processes which led to Samadhi and similar religious experiences. (Everitt, 2016)
*Aleister Crowley, Magick: Liber ABA, Book 4, Parts I-IV, with Mary Desti and Leila Waddell, 2nd rev. edn, ed.
by Hymenaeus Beta [William Breeze] (San Francisco, CA: Weiser, 2010)
As we have seen, Crowley’s experiences with Cannabis and Mescaline both fall into these categories, and his contributions towards the reintroduction of these substances in a ritual context engendered towards producing a spiritual, or ‘entheogenic’ experience may be his greatest contribution to humanity.
Considering that the Father of LSD, Albert Hofmann, and others have speculated that the ancient Eleusian rites may have utilized a sacrament containing an ergot which held LSD like chemicals, it is interesting that Crowley put on a performance art style ritual the “Rites of Eleusis” which included mescaline and a variety of other substances administered in a “loving cup”. There is also the previously mentioned possibility that that the pre word war 2 interactions between Crowley and Aldous Huxley in Berlin of the 30s, led to the laters undeniably profound influences on 60s drug culture.
“…Huxley’s doubtless intellectually intense time with Crowley might have planted seeds in his mind that would sprout years later in Huxley’s book about mescaline experiences, The Doors of Perception (1954), a key work of the 1960’s Psychedelic revolution. A pioneer, Crowley had been experimenting with mescaline since the early century. His scientific insights illuminated his understanding of the nature of perception and the phenomenal universe” (Churton, 2014).
As the later messiah of psychedelic culture, Dr. Timothy Leary Stated in a 1980 PBS interview:
“I’ve been an admirer of Aleister Crowley, I think that I am carrying on much of the work that he started over a hundred years ago, and I think the sixties themselves… you know Crowley said… he was in favour of finding your own self, and “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” – under love – it was a very powerful statement. I’m sorry he isn’t around to appreciate the glories he started.” (Leary, 1980)
Here at the dawn of the New Age, that Crowley and his like only dreamed of, as a whole new generation begins to explore the unconscious of humanity with cannabis and even more potent substances, they might do themselves well to read from the works of this turn of the twentieth century pioneering psychonaut and consider some of his advice and techniques in relation to their own travels in the “astral realm”. But, remember, as Crowley himself ended his essay on hashish, “…take my word for nothing: try all things; hold fast that which is good!”.
