Tobias Churton – Aleister Crowley the story of the great beast

The reason I enjoy this conversation, and I do emphasize this, is a little bit unlike my regular interviews, and is far more of a casual conversation between myself and Tobias. We not only explore Crowley in interesting perspectives, but a lot of the events and things that surrounded the character and the common perceptions that were not only common in his day but are also today in the presence affecting the misrepresentation and understanding of this individual.

I think that you’ll find some very interesting stories, especially when we get to about 45 minutes when him and I are really kicking into the depth of this conversation, and it starts to progress into some interesting perspectives. But regardless of that, I’m confident that you’re going to find some interesting perspective from Tobias on not only Crowley but on the general status of misinterpretation of occultism and the practices around there.

We talk about how people sometimes separate themselves from reality in these perspectives and how fundamental it is to stay connected. We look at this individual within the light of the context of the time. Trust me, if you haven’t already watched my review, you’ll know one thing that I do respect is the thorough detail and logical approach both of Tobias, as well as what he really puts Crowley in from almost the scientific and the psychological.

Not really psychological, but far more a grounded perspective on how we approach occultism and helped kind of interpret some of those more esoteric ideas in a far more grounded and practical manner than many have tried to interpret date them. Given lack of foundational research, something you won’t find in this work. Sit back, relax, and remember to live deliciously.

Tobias, thank you for taking the time, and welcome to the cult of you.

Thank you for asking.

It’s a pleasure. You are quite a leading scholar, an expert in Western esotericism, and it’s an honor to sit down with you. I’ve recently received your brilliant, detailed collection of Aleister Crowley, which I think many can say is the definitive piece of work to get on the subject. I believe you initially had a single kind of overview of it, and then you broke down into the pieces. What kind of inspired you to take that courageous step?

It was on my mind for many, many, many years, I think. I wanted to, I got into quite a lot of trouble, in a way, when I was a student at Oxford as a theology student. It went around that I was interested in Crowley, and this was held against me as a sign of deviance.

That was possibly dangerous. I felt then and subsequently that a great injustice had been done where Crowley was concerned and that people hadn’t investigated the evidence with any respect whatsoever. They’d be very quick to happily take on the image of the beast and not look any further. It was obvious to me when I first read The Confessions of Mr. Carney, which was his sort of autobiography and also hagiography.

Tongue in cheek, as usual, which only went up to about 1922, 23. And that was 900 pages. But it was obvious from reading it that he’d written this account of his life, not so much to tell all the details of his life, because it doesn’t do that. People imagine it does, but it didn’t.

It’s really a kind of teaching piece. What he does is he uses his life to trip off and make general statements about life philosophy, problems in the world of psychology particularly, he’s interested in. At times it rambles and digresses, but I think somebody once said of Louis Aragon, the writer, that he’s most interesting when he’s digressing, then I think that’s true.

His travels, digressions are always fascinating. It’s only if you’re expecting a conventional narrative and then the digressions can become irritating. But, I mean, he was a bit of an autodidact.

When it was in his head at the time, it tends to come out. It was obvious to me from reading that, aged 18, the first time I read it, that this was a mind, full stop, here was a mind, Crowley is a mind, and he’s the respect you have of him.

It depends on what sort of mind you have. To me, it was always hard to find a mind that I could really respect. And suddenly here was one. He reminded me of some other figures that interested me, who also had great minds. You had a great mind. You can argue about whether he did the best that with that mind.

But anyway, he was an artist. He had a great mind. And in my view, he was unjustly accounted for. And his reputation still to this day, despite scholarly work that’s been done in the last 30 years, particularly to correct the follies, the yellow press, the general reputation is still pretty poor.

So it’s improved there. I would always say seek initial find. I undertook then to when I had the opportunity to do the seeking. But it wasn’t until 19, about 1991, and I decided to try and do a film about Crowley for television.

Then I got access to his private papers, diaries, letters at the Warburg Institute in London.

And that was the breakthrough because then I wasn’t relying on second or third-hand books and other people’s attempts at biography. I was reading. I was holding in my hand the actual notebooks, letters, and so forth, and the picture that emerged from that was absolutely extraordinary. Well, I was confronted with a different person to the public image, entirely different person.

There was no sense of a psychotic personality or certainly there’s no indication of a criminal personality or any perversion or anything that made you feel uncomfortable. And certainly, there was no sense of evil or darkness. I’m not one of those people who like reading books about criminals. I know some people are addicted to reading books about the worst kind of extraordinary personalities who create, you know, death about them and destruction.

My feeling about Crowley was that this was a remarkable, decadent person centric to the late Victorian period, but whose thinking seemed to be quite ahead of his time. And, also, had he never lost his sense of humor. And you do find usually with people who have gone off the deep end and have lost their sanity, or never had it.

They don’t have a sense of humor. Yeah, the usual thing and certainly negative characteristics. You find that they are cold. Crowley was not cold. He was warm-hearted. He could define his life. I mean, he had to survive after the age of, shall we say, by the time he was 40, he was struggling financially to survive.

Actually, before that, I’m just out of the gates. Inherited fortune in 1896, if I remember right.

He’d spent the bulk of that by 1914. So he had a long way to go with practically no income. It’s amazing he survived that. That obviously made him rather short-tempered and exacerbated his illness, which was essentially bronchial, bronchial problems, bronchitis, and asthma,

For which his Harley Street doctor prescribed heroin in 1919, and he became an addict of heroin for large parts of the rest of his life.

He wasn’t living like a junkie. He got it. He got his stuff from the doctor and the chemist.

For him, it was medicinal. No question that he didn’t get any further than what he did, but he nearly died several times in his life, 1924, and also during the Second World War, he nearly died from the asthmatic and bronchial damage.

He did eventually die at age 72. So this is an interesting thing, this relationship between asthma and magic because its great teacher of magic, Alan Bennett, also suffered severely from it. It must have been exacerbated, I think, by his, his humor,

Raj yoga techniques of holding his breath, letting it out, trying to control the breathing.

I remember Gurdjieff said something about this, that interfering with your breath control could, in some cases, do people a lot of damage. I think these guys probably did that.

That’s a very interesting position. One thing that you raise is he was an exceptionally lucid person for anybody that’s researched him. Even in his works on the drug fiend, he was very much as an animal, analytically looking at the experience and the expression. And it wasn’t someone that was ridden by these things as much.

It was almost a scientist in his own rights. He was almost a scientist. I think his entire attitude was the thing that’s really been misunderstood about, curiously, is that he brought science to bear on magic, which is why he created a lot of enemies in the occult fraternity.

I mean, a lot of the damage done to his reputation was done by people who were very interested in Freemasonry, occultism.

And so for Theosophy, particularly the Philosophical Society had it against him. Right? Right from the early part of the 20th century and still does in my experience today. And there was always attention. I mean, he didn’t accept

Any best as the successor of Blavatsky. He thought he was the successor of landscape, and he expected the intelligent part of the Theosophical Society to wake up to that and recognize him.

He definitely believed that he was the world teacher.

If you’re interested in my view of that, if there is a world teacher, he was certainly better qualified than the people who’ve been put forward as teachers in the 20th century, whether it was only Besant or Krishnamurti or any number of gurus from India.

I mean, Crowley is much more a man of the modern world. A lot of what’s been brought from India is, frankly, antique knowledge.

While there’s a hunger for it in the West, I think Crowley had more to say about the realistic conditions of our time and the future.

In my view, I think that’s what comes over. Comes over if you read my books about him, it’s the farsightedness. He’s not an antique magician trying to sell an image of magic. The romantic Merlin. Merlin kind dressing up, this sort of thing. I mean, he gave up things like ceremonial magic,

In the main, quite early on.

He, you know, once he got to the bottom of it, as far as he was concerned, he dispensed with the outer trimmings.

I think you mentioned a certain robe I think you mentioned. Or you kind of indicate the idea that at one point when he was kind of exploring or diving deeper into India,

And the ideas of samadhi and how that correlated to almost a better approach to the concept of the Holy Guardian Angel or the overlap on that.

Am I correct in that understanding?

Yeah. For him, well, somebody is really an exalted trance in which the subjectivity is dissolved in a universal consciousness.

As far as he was concerned, the encounter with the Holy Guardian angel would be a samadhi, because it’s an encounter with what we call God or the little boy.

He always used the word Adonai, which is the Hebrew euphemism for God, for God’s name, the Lord. So meeting the Lord, which is

It? It gets very funny if you start talking about the God within, which is a very theosophical way of putting it, that Crowley wouldn’t have that, he didn’t think that, you know, the divinity was secreted somewhere,

In the person,

Which was a sort of occult or spiritualist belief.

But the ultimate nature of the human being is divine. But that is not, of course, identified with the individual personality as such.

And, which is tied to the temporal sphere in that sense, his teaching on the Holy God in Angel is traditional teaching. What he did was synthesize these different traditions, show their identity. So the top of the Dow,

Is the Lord in a sense, that’s the kind of way, way.

And the Holy Guardian angel is the Lord insofar as contact with any individual.

So, yeah, as he I, I mean, he wrote to the, the master, of Trinity College, Cambridge, as early as 1913, I think, or 1910. And remember and he just said, look, I’ve traveled the world. And what I’ve learned is that if you’ve the essence of wisdom and the way of life is to make contact with your guardian angel and entrust to that being you, will welfare.

That’s what he that’s really what the Beatles and all the other things that the various rituals are, just means to encourage that. Now, if this was a very simple matter, it’s easy to say, but the actual acquisition of a permanent consciousness of closeness to what he calls the angel, which is just a romantic phrase, it’s not a suggestion and it’s not a defining phrase.

None of these words for the ultimate absolute being God.

Defining words. I’m trying to think of that lovely phrase of Stanislas to get to. He said, that’s right.

Yes. A God defined as a finite god. Yes. So, yes. You know, we use these words and,

Crowley’s system was a synthesis of different traditions, including Kabbalah.

And he was very keen on, the teaching, later on because he liked its simplicity,

In his writings on that, I think I covered that in my partly, partly in the Alister Crowley in England book and also in the, Mr. Crowley in India book, which breaks down exactly what he thought, what he gained,

From his acquaintance with, with Hindu mysticism.

That’s opening that.

It’s an interesting precept. It kind of leads me to another question, which might be a bit esoteric in its approach, as most of our subject matter is in certain regards. You point out his view said, in relationship to the spirits as an other, as a way to almost avoid ego inflation. There’s also the contrast in some of his work where he talks about the Gosha in reference, as some people have interpreted, at least as portions of the brain.

But there’s almost a highlight of recognizing or taking these concepts in of ourselves.

Yet in order to avoid this ego influence in this exaggerated ego perspective of thinking, we are suddenly God, but remaining almost humble and open to those possibilities of this hierarchy within where this hierarchy of spiritual probabilities and developments of consciousness. What do you feel?

Is he getting to know him as well as you had? He seems to, especially through your work, have a very grounded perspective. He’s not far out there as many people paint him as very esoteric. It seems quite grounded, especially from a psychological point of view.

Is that accurate, that his interpretations are more from a psychological perspective?

Are they more deep, esoteric? What’s your perception? Your take on that?

Already had an enormous amount of common sense. He never lost his contact with the sort of ground and ground base.

If he looked into the stars, his feet were on the ground.

That was his general thing. He was, of course, quite right. The biggest danger was sensing any use.

The word magician or explorer of the spirit is the identification of the self with the ultimate self.

We see this all the time anyway, in life, in people, they. What makes some people think they’re so bleeding important that they can run a country or dictate to the world. Yeah.

Well, what is this ego problem?

I mean, it’s an abiding problem in esotericism, but it’s a defining problem everywhere. Crowley would say that there isn’t a problem that he’s encountered in the life of the mind. That doesn’t boil down to an exacerbated ego. But then his old friend Gerald York, who they first met in 1927,

Who knew Crowley well from 1927 to the till?

He died and very well. They were close at certain points,

Would say that Crowley himself, of course, could be an enormous ego. You go through. But he could oscillate you, and he was being the word of the holy guru. When he was being Alister Crowley now he would say, well, what you’re taking his ego is, it would be his holy guardian angel coming through him, which he didn’t feel he could gainsay.

I mean, he accepted that he had this other power coming through him. When it did,

That’s what came through. To anybody else, it might have looked like he was just a terrible egotist. But I think, anyway, Crowley had a huge ego. He had a massive ego. He had the ego of a great talent.

I don’t know anybody really talented who doesn’t suffer the effects of their own self-awareness.

Crowley also wrote in his diary a couple of times. He said, of course, I’ve always been insane.

Now, how are we to take this? Is this a diagnosis?

It’s very hard to say. He did he just mean as far as the world’s concerned, I’m insane.

I think everybody’s at times thought they were insane or going insane. Maybe I lost the bounce, but he didn’t say I’m feeling insane at the moment. He said, I’ve always been insane. And I think, in that sense, he always felt outside of the ordinary mind. He would say, for that reason, you cannot judge me as an ordinary person.

Now, is that a dangerous ego? Well, I say the tree is known by the fruits. How do you go around, raping, pillaging, and murdering? Then you would know, certainly, that he eats, succumbs to a psychosis.

My own view is that while he was given to decadent excesses,

And he certainly

One who’s given to decadent excesses, they are decadent excesses.

They usually had a reason for there’s usually an artistic or imaginative reason for that. But he managed to keep himself under control anyway.

I think it’s a very difficult one,

To assess the best psychological analysis of cruelty I haven’t done to date that I’m aware of. It’s by Israel. Regarding. He wrote a book, came out in 83, I think,

Called the I in the triangle and that’s now is there regard.

He was a sort of a union therapist, right. He and therapist, he liked all the new psychologies. I mean, they’re all new anyway, but,

They’re all a bit novel. He was a practicing psychotherapist, but he’s also been privately secretary,

From 1920, 1928, 2930. And they split later on.

But in later life, regard, he realized that while it crowded upsetting, he’d been a great man, and he wanted to say why.

But in the process of writing the behind the triangle, he did do a psychological analysis. He basically said that Kramer had a huge set of armor plates, a defense mechanism,

Most people never got anywhere under them. He wasn’t always aware of what was under them either. So there were projections. You know, you might see a monster come out here and there, but the original person was very complex, deeply emotional, far more emotional than anybody realized. He’s not easy to assess psychologically. No.

Anyway, if you read my books and then they probably reflect this, because, there’s a lot of humor in them, despite the dark passages. So that’s part of Crowley’s makeup.

I don’t know if you know when you read Crowley, he’s very funny. And you know, I mean, I think he’s very funny. Yes. You don’t know when he’s been serious. You do know because he’s in the piece where he put his tongue firmly in his cheek. Yes.

But even then, it’s a brilliant literary style,

I mean, it’s often comedic, darkly comedic,

Which, for me, makes it fun.

I find it fun as well, in that way. But I also do think you have to be quite serious when you read it.

You can’t just take everything at face value. One of the things you were saying that I think highlights a big thing is his love for humor. And if I’m not mistaken, it was either yourself or I think one of the other scholars that spoke about how one of the elements that had a big impact on him was the, initially, I think it was Sherlock Holmes’ work, but then he came across, I think it was Carl May’s works, and those works had a big impact on his later expansion or wanting to see the world and things like that.

Would you say that’s an accurate interpretation or representation? I think it’s my interpretation. Yeah.

It came as well. You came as quite big, quite a lot.

Quite early on. He was given these books by Carl Meyer, a German author, and the Mayan books were adventure books. I think his father was still alive, and his mother was still alive at that time. And they, they kept, for some reason, they were comfortable with them reading these. But the important thing was, they fired his imagination, and he identified with the characters.

Yeah, I think particularly the main character was an old shatterhand, who was a kind of wanderer.

So it’s this identification with the wonder. It comes out of the fact that Crowley was born into an extraordinary Protestant sect known as the Plymouth Brethren,

That took the Bible entirely literally. It wasn’t a big problem for him that they took the Bible literally because most people did at that time. But they took it super-literally. They expected the rapture and the second coming of Jesus at any moment. Crowley took them seriously, which is why he had a strong interest in Bible prophecy. You know, this was all going to happen soon, and he accepted that.

Now, the Plymouth Brethren, because they believe they’re the people that they are, the Holy Israel, the Chosen of God, and the rest of the world are going to hellfire,

They didn’t mix with the rest of the world. They didn’t mix. They weren’t encouraged to go and talk to any of them.

They’re told to stay away from them. The rest of the world is evil.

Now, you can imagine how, you know, you’re growing up in Victorian England, and you’re living in a well-to-do suburb of Leamington Spa,

And you’ve got a big house and large gardens.

And you’re living in this weird religious sect, and the only people that you know are all part of this sect. But the whole world out there is condemned by God. You know, these are all the damned. I mean, it’s terrifying. It is.

Crowley’s aware of the deep psychology of fear that went with that. There was nothing in the world outside of it that was attractive. That’s very much the Old Testament. Yes. The Bible is very much part of the Old Testament and not so much of the New.

And the kind of energy of that. Yeah, yeah. It was very much like that.

They were expecting a rapture. I mean, yes, when Christ comes back,

They’ll be taken up and everybody else can burn.

That was the thing that really got him thinking about religion because he wanted to find out what this was all about.

And I think his first efforts were made to read the Bible properly,

And, you know, with a mind, not to look at it for what it was,

Rather than have somebody tell him what it was.

So he was one of those kids, always asking questions. They don’t like it if you ask questions. And his father was a really nice man. He was a good man. He was a Plymouth brother preacher. So he would go out on the road, and Crowley would accompany him on these tours. And they loved each other.

And I think Crowley got the idea of, in the end, that there was a kind of good Christian,

Who was sort of good,

As opposed to the Christian who had no sort of warmth to them at all.

Yeah. And a lot of his literature had no warmth. And so I think Crowley identified with his father because his father, you know, was warm. And they did love each other. It was important. And this is why it was so devastating when he died in 1887. It was terrible.

But even at that point, at the funeral, Crowley was already showing signs of being interested in what happens when you die, because he wrote a note to himself,

Saying, you know, at this point, you know, the soul passes into the region of the, uh, fifth circle and that there are thirteen angels looking after the soul. And he’s all this sort of weird stuff he’s putting down on paper.

And he thought, well, he’s already decided that he knows what’s going on here.

But of course, he didn’t really, but this is what was coming into his mind. Now the other thing is, his mother was not a warm person.

She was, unfortunately, quite critical of him and made his life extremely difficult after his father died. And she would constantly criticize him, constantly nag him.

Now, I’m not saying that she was a bad person, but she was very strict.

And she also believed in the Plymouth Brethren ideology. She was the one that called him a beast.

That was in 1888, I think.

And he sort of looked back and thought, well, if you think I’m a beast, then I’ll become a beast.

Which is often the case. We fulfill the roles. You say, this is who you are. If you say so.

I’m the beast. So there was this rebellious nature coming out of it. And there’s nothing worse, really, than being a rebellious child when the circumstances are so constrained.

Now, you know, I feel in a strange sense, Crowley had a fantastic upbringing in terms of having material things. I mean, they weren’t short of money.

And he didn’t know what poverty was until he was quite old. But this notion of, sort of, spiritual poverty and a lack of warmth from his mother were, for him, a big problem.

And these books, like Carl May and whatnot, they fire his imagination. He wanted to get out there. And that was an outlet for him.

You know, he would imagine these journeys and these things that these characters would do.

And that was a way for him to get out of this constricted life he had. It was so tightly controlled.

I think a lot of people miss that aspect of him because they see the later aspects of his life. And they don’t realize how much of this was a reaction to what he had to endure growing up. Absolutely.

And the sense of freedom he was looking for and this sense of exploration.

And he was a great traveler. He traveled a lot. He went to some amazing places.

I mean, he was climbing mountains in the Himalayas before most people had even thought about it.

And he was always looking for something. You know, he was always searching.

And I think that searching was really his driving force.

I think you’re right. And I think a lot of people look at him in terms of, kind of, a party animal or, you know, drugs, sex, rock and roll type. And they don’t realize there was a lot more to him than that.

And it was this deep search for something that was driving him. And he was very knowledgeable. He had a tremendous amount of knowledge. I mean, he was a very intelligent man.

But he was always searching for something more. And I think that’s really where his story is so fascinating. Yes, yes, I think so.

And I think one of the things I really like about your book is that you bring that out.

You bring out the humanity in him and the complexity of his character.

And it’s not just this one-dimensional, you know, beast of a man that people have made him out to be.

He was a very complex character. And I think you’ve done a wonderful job in bringing that out.