Comments on: Philosophical Influence on Crowley?

By: prunesquallori

prunesquallori — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 13:50:34 +0000

Read the Enneads by Plotinus. Neoplatonist philosophy influenced sufism and persian thought before it got around to us.

You might try “Phenomenology of Spirit” by Hegel, too.

By: Haeresis

Haeresis — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 07:46:06 +0000

No, but he was a major influence all the same…and a philosopher in his own way.

By: Jerky

Jerky — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 06:49:14 +0000

Rabbelais wasn’t really a philosopher though, was he?

Not that I don’t love the guy!

By: Haeresis

Haeresis — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 06:25:53 +0000

Rabbelais.

By: Jerky

Jerky — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 05:23:59 +0000

Interesting topic, Tim. The black bridges that link Western philosophy and Western esotericism are definitely worth exploring; with the whole Thelema/Will thing being as obvious and excellent a place to start as any.

Know Bataille only by name, not by ideas. Will promptly dig in.

By: rev max

rev max — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 23:42:42 +0000

or hell, just read Gargantua and Pantagruel

By: rev max

rev max — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 23:41:10 +0000

Seems to me that Crowleys’s concept of will is basically Nietzschean, what Bataille calls sovereignty.

Wasn’t the motto over crowley’s abbey taken from Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel?

You might also check out Bakhtin who was a Russian literary philosopher and a huge fan of Rabelais.

By: Occult Investigator

Occult Investigator — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 23:32:20 +0000

Yeah I love Sun Tzu, I haven’t read him in forever. I should. I’ve come across the “acephale” elsewhere Max. I’ll look into it more. Plato’s a good call too. I guess I’m also looking more specifically for Crowley and how he developed the idea of “Will” which I know was hugely popular at the time philosophically

By: N.M

N.M — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 23:21:20 +0000

This may be obvious… but Plato is pretty good for that.

Once you get over the academic connontations to his work, (which drew me away from getting into it in the first place) it definately opens up some of the roots of modern thought.

The Alegory of the Cave from The Republic Part 7 identifies the original theory of the Matrix.

Other than that as a philsophical reading, it is much easier to digest because of the dialectic style (ie conversational) The republic also establishes Plato`s own version of Leary`s 8 circut model, but into four parts.

On the other spectrum, In Twilight of the Idols/ The Antichrist, Nietzsche has one of my favorite philosphical texts in the form of Maxims and Arrows. These are a collection of quotes and or ideas that are layed out in short form, very easy to read but much to ponder.

Both of the above, have greatly influenced the occult in their ways as has Hagel and other germanic philsophers (for obvious reasons)

Again in true form to the occult, you could approach Eastern work such as Confucius, or Sun Tzu in the same manner.

I could go on, but I think that this is a start…

By: rev max

rev max — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 23:17:57 +0000

Not an influence on crowley that i know of - just a fantastic religious philosopher who was also an occultist

By: rev max

rev max — Tue, 05 Jul 2005 23:14:41 +0000

Geroges Bataille was a French postmodernist philosopher who sort of represented the dark underbelly of surrelism - Andre Breton actually kicked him out because his writing was too sexual, scatalogical and violent

He wrote an amazing book about economics called the accursed share where he compared modern economic movements to the aztecs & human sacrifice

He wrote other books about human sacrifice, religion and its connection to lust, plus bizarre, dreamy pornographic novels like the story of the eye

A major influence on a number of differnet people from Baudrillard to Burroughs

Bataille himself tried to start an occult organization called the acephale - or headless- movement. It was a secret society dedicated to stopping fascism

problem was they were going to kick things off with a human sacrifice, everyone voulunteered to be sacrificed but nobody wanteed to be the one to do it

great short story on the essentials of his philiosophy here:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/enc/stories/s281136.htm

personally i’m a huge fan of Bataille, he was also one of the first to rehabilitate nietzsche from the taint of post-war links to fascism (which Nietzsche was against but that sort of thing never stops misdirected admirers)