Parva reviews this recent controversial book..
(Sannyasnews has noticed that few of the sannyas media have taken note of this book. In fact with the exception of Viha Connection, where a version of this review first appeared it seems to have been ignored. This is almost certainly because of the use of the word “dangerous”. However even in a cursory reading of a 708 page book it is clear that we are talking here of magi who are are dangerous to the ego and identity of those who take themselves too seriously, not dangerous in the normal sense. )
I eagerly awaited the publication of The Three Dangerous Magi, having discussed the book with Teertha (P.T.Mistlberger) on numerous occasions while he was writing it, and read it shortly after it was released. I thought it was good. Excellent, in fact.
The book will, of course, be of particular interest to sannyasins as much of it is devoted to Osho. And it also serves as an excellent introduction to the lives and teachings of Gurdjieff and Crowley, two of the twentieth century’s other most interesting teachers.
So who is Teertha and why should you buy his book?
Teertha has been a sannyasin since 1983, but never (so he claims) regarded Osho as his one and only, and has studied the works of numerous other teachers, including, obviously, Gurdjieff and Crowley. He worked – er, worshipped – on the Ranch as a landscaping grunt and later was fortunate enough to be able to sit with Osho in Nepal, but was never a Lao Tzu resident or otherwise, as they say “close to Osho”, so this is not one of those intimate, gossipy insider memoirs generally written by either the deeply devotional or the bitterly disaffected. It is, rather, a sympathetic and well informed but arms-length look at the life, teaching, and impact of Osho (along with Gurdjieff and Crowley, of course), written in a scholarly but readable style.
The first part of the book contains biographical sketches of Osho, Gurdjieff, and Crowley, while the second outlines their teachings. Having studied Osho and Gurdjieff extensively I can say that these introductions are excellent, covering the key points of their lives and teachings without going into excessive detail. I’m prepared to assume that the same is true regarding the chapters on Crowley.
I found the third part, entitled Commentaries, to be the most interesting. It consists of eight chapters, each of which takes a theme and looks at how the lives, teachings, and communities of Osho, Gurdjieff and Crowley handled or expressed it. Actually the topic of communes takes up two chapters, one of which is devoted almost entirely to the Ranch, including Teertha’s views on Sheela. Gurdjieff and Crowley also had communes and these are discussed in the other – I found it interesting to compare and contrast. The chapter titles give a pretty good idea of their contents, so here are a few eye-catchers: Self-Perfection and the Myth of the Infallible Guru; Magical Warfare; Of Drugged Sages, Drunken Idiots, and Mysterious Deaths; and of course Of Women and Sex.
My only complaint about the book is that of a five-year-old. No pictures! Teertha has promised that this will be rectified in the second edition, which is hopefully coming soon, and will also have – scholars contain yourselves – an index.
Parva
I really do not think Gurdjieff and Osho should be associated with Crowley.
Crowley was a satanist. One of his children died of neglect. Isn’t that enough to condemn him?
Anything for a buck I suppose!
its not a bad read.
those three guys really were dangerous.
not least to their own livers and internal organs.
but i cant help feeling that the author,mistelberger probably did most of his research on osho from the back pages of sannyasnews!!
the wordworks of that bunch of ragtaggle maguses,excuse me, magi….
parmatha,pari,andreas roth,calder,antony thompson,frank,oshobob,lokesh,martyn,bubbie,to name a few, and all the rest of those religious nutters
are the new akashik records
no doubt about that…..
Rag-tag magi, I love it.
I enjoyed some of Crowleys books, in particular Diary of a Drugfiend, something I could relate to in the early part of my adult life. Really though, I don’t think Crowley ranks up there with the likes of Osho and Gurdieff, except perhaps on the level of being an out and out rebel.
I reacently read a great book called ‘The Acid’, I think now retitled The Acid Diaries. Written by a sannyasin, now deceased, it chronicles the internal escapades of the author’s return to using LSD as a tool for introspection. At times ridiculously funny, it was right up my literary street. As for the above tome, maybe I will get around to reading it one of these days.
Well it’s nice to be in the same boat as you Lokesh, but I am not so sure of some of our other companions! (Religious nutter, never been called that before!!!)
Pari incidentally is deceased for two years, so Macmurphy is really talking history here.
As for the said Macmurphy, I am happy to leave him behind on the other shore!
Appreciate mention of the book….er, I think.
For the record, any ‘controversy’ connected to the book is perhaps not so much around the word ‘dangerous’, but more around the inclusion of Crowley in the subject matter. (He of course being notoriously controversial — although I think it probable that some sannyasins are blissfully unaware of just how controversial Osho is in the eyes of certain other seekers/writers/growth communities. As an amusing example, while soliciting endorsements from various authors, one well-known author replied to me that he could not in good conscience endorse the book because while he thought Gurdjieff and Crowley tolerable, he detested Osho, and was convinced he was nothing more than an unrepentant guru).
I’m not interested in defending at length the honor of Crowley, but for the record I do believe he represented an exceptional rebel for the repressive Victorian/Edwardian era he grew up in, a new brand of seeker, and, I believe, an important inroad toward the 1960s consciousness revolution. (He was one of the main patron saints of the hippie era for a good reason). I think he would have been immensely drawn to Osho had he been able to meet him. And just as Osho was strongly drawn to Gurdjieff, so was too was Crowley. Crowley went out of his way to meet Gurdjieff; their meeting in 1926 at G’s Prieure is the stuff of legend (I devote a chapter in the book to it, along with Osho’s ‘feud’ with Krishnamurti).
As to the first post by alokjohn:
1. No, Crowley was not a Satanist. This is probably the most persistent myth about him, and admittedly a difficult one to see through, partly because Crowley himself made it difficult! If you do a Google-sweep, you’ll find more sites hysterically proclaiming Crowley’s ‘Satanism’ than those that (correctly) deny it. So it is understandable, if disappointing, that so many fall for this one. I explain in the book why he was not a Satanist, but a longer explanation could probably have been done. It’s not a subject that terribly interests me, however. Actual Satanism itself, as founded by Anton LaVey and developed by Michael Aquino via his Temple of Set, is more innocuous than most suppose. (It’s mostly a materialist philosophy, a contrarian outgrowth of Christian dogma, all with a strong flavor of the absurd and a twinkle in the eye. And no, it does not involve itself in criminal acts of any sort).
Bear in mind, also, that Crowley lived before the Hollywood Hammer Horror era that was really kick-started in the 1950s (Crowley died in 1947). It was fiction authors like Dennis Wheatley who were responsible for the silly characterization of ‘devil-worship’, especially via his novel The Devil Rides Out, that was made into a film in 1967. This was then followed by all those bad-ass films of the 1970s (The Omen, The Exorcist, etc.), which were basically inverted parodies of Christianity.
Satan is a Judeo-Christian belief, and Crowley rejected Christianity wholesale, including its ‘devils’. He once wrote:
“The Devil does not exist. It is a false name invented by the Black Brothers to imply a Unity in their ignorant muddle of dispersions. A devil who had unity would be a God… ‘The Devil’ is, historically, the God of any people that one personally dislikes.” (Magick, Book 4).
It gets confusing because Crowley used the imagery of Baphomet in his Gnostic mass (and symbol sometimes mistaken for the Judeo-Christian Satan), but he intended it as an alchemical symbol for the unification of opposites. Think an esoteric slant on Jungian Shadow work, and you’re starting to get the hang of it.
By modern terms, Crowley was a Left-Hand Tantrica, as well as an advanced scholar of the Western esoteric tradition (alchemy, tarot, Qabalah, etc.). He also had a wicked sense of humor, enjoyed teasing those conditioned by uptight religious values, and frequently used puns and word plays to push all that. (He actually was remarkably similar to Osho in many ways, and I highlight a group of these similarities in an Appendix in the book).
2. No, I did not write this book to ‘make a buck’. I spent five concentrated months writing the book in 2009, during which time I sacrificed about $10,000 in personal work income. My advance for the book? Zero. My first bi-annual royalty check for the book? It was $419 (and the first check is generally the biggest). There is no real money in book-writing, as most authors, including academics, will readily confirm. You have to get to the Tolle-Redfield Oprah-fied stratosphere to make any significant moola as an author. I wrote the book sheerly out of passion for these teachers and their fascinating lives. Passion is pretty much the only thing that can fuel a 700+ pg book, unless you’re Stephen King or some such name.
3. Re Lokesh’s comment, on the matter of whether or not Crowley was at the same ‘level’ as Osho and Gurdjieff, I can understand wondering about this, given the title of the book. But at no point do I suggest that all three are at some ‘equal level’ (in fact, I steer clear of such ‘ranking’ as best I can). My inclusion of these three in one book does not automatically imply that I seem them as some sort of perfect peers. On the contrary, I am more conscious of their unique differences, and I write about these at length. On page 444 in the book, I wrote,
‘All that aside, there is to be noted a fundamental link between Osho and Gurdjieff, a realm that they share, that Crowley stands apart from. Put simply, Osho and Gurdjieff were gurus, masters (character tendencies notwithstanding). Crowley however sits uncomfortably in such a designation. He is more properly a rogue prophet, mystic, and scholar. As an actual facilitator of people’s growth, as a “guru,” he appears to have been mostly ineffectual, and indeed there is little sign that he was ever interested in such a role to begin with. I do however see him as one of the Magi of humanity because of the overwhelming power of his commitment to both walking the inner journey, and to explaining this journey to humanity with skill, unprecedented depth, and relevancy for current times.’
But for any of this to be clear, one has to actually read Crowley’s stuff.
Also, I have a page on my website that clarifies a few errors in the book, probably most notable of which is that I stated in the book that Osho ‘never mentioned Crowley’, but in fact he did, in the Darshan Diary called ‘The Buddha Disease’ (1977). Osho said about Crowley:
“Just this morning I was reading a book of Aleister Crowley. The man has some great insights into things…not always right, but when he is right, he is right; when he is wrong, he is really wrong. He is a very double-bind personality—very good and very bad together—but he is not a mediocre. Either he is very bad or he is very good; he is either really right or he is really wrong—but he is never lukewarm.
He writes about samadhi—and I liked his four sutras. In the first sutra he says ‘Sit still’. In the second sutra he says ‘Stop thinking’. In the third sutra he says ‘Shut up!’ And in the fourth sutra, he says ‘Get out!’
I liked it. This is exactly what samadhi is: get out! That is the meaning of the word ecstasy.”
Osho then veered off on a tangent; that was all he had to say about Crowley, and to my knowledge, those are the only words he ever said about him. The link for his remarks is here:
http://www.livingworkshop.net/PDF-files/dd-The_Buddha_Disease.pdf (pg 122).
(This was not discovered by myself, but by a sannyasin who posted shortly after my book was published at the Aleister Crowley website, LAShTAL.com, under the handle ‘Swami’).
– Teertha (P.T. Mistlberger)
I haven’t read any crowley . hardly any gurdjieff, and some osho …..
now then… when it comes to spending an evening in I tend to think of whats for dinner, my girlfriend has a nice arse , and…. finish off the evening by a walk in the local nature, and writing a few insults on sannyasnews. Not necessarily a mystic life one could quickly surmise. Now then if i did read gurdjieff , crowley, osho et al ..would my evenings change much ? Or my focus in life (pretty girls) or my consciousnarse ? Or my contributions to sunpat news? Answers as always on a postcard please.
p.s. this Teertha- not the same as the infamous on of Pune1?
“magis of humanity”
“left-hand rantricas”
“rogue prophets”
“occult studies”
“mystery schools”
“black magic attacks”
“powers that work against consciousness when it gets too strong”
just boys games
and super excuses for getting blasted…..
whenever i meet people who come up with this stuff,i say..
uh oh…
medication time!!
Teertha, I really appreciated your above comment and as a fellow writer I can certainly relate.
Just for the record, I actually heard Osho mention Crowley at another juncture. The essence of it was that he thought Crowley was misguided. This was way back in the mid-seventies, perhaps on the back porch of Lao Tzu. before they began recording everything he said. I paid attention because during my hippie incarnation I read most of Crowley’s books. What is largely disregarded about Crowley are his accomplishments as a mountaineer. The man had balls. No doubt about it.
Gurdjieff drank himself to death against doctors orders.
Crowley died a penniless heroin addict.
Osho,after years of drugtaking died convinced he was being attacked by black magic cultists.
These guys are “Magi”?
Is there really a market for musings on these ludicrous has-beens?
I`m amazed.
And Swami Prem Martyn.
By the sound of it,rather than “Three Magi”
I would suggest you might find “Three Men in a Boat” might be more salutary.
Did Gurdjieff really drink himself to death? I don’t thinks so, he probably just died of old age. But then I wasn’t there, but I have read many a book about his life and although he liked to drink Armagnac was he even an alcoholic? Liking a drink or even drinking regularly does not equate to being an alkie. Some evidence please.
For the record, no this is not the same Teertha who was known to all in Pune one. That Teertha led the ashram encounter groups and was a graduate of Esalen. His name is Paul Lowe and he is still alive. No doubt an internet search would reveal more about his current activities if any.
Thanks to J Billington who wins this weeks lotto draw for most perceptive insight ‘on spending time on the Thames ‘.. which is quite walkable/swimmable/rowable in its upper reaches nearabouts Stroud in Gloucestershire…In fact Gurdjieff by way of his disciple Bennet ran the Beshara Centre in Oxfordshire there, for many post war years.In fact it was Ivor Lewis (Nirvan , Ko Hsuan )cousin of actor Peter Ustinov and son of World War 1 fighter Ace, Cecil Lewis and founder of the BBC, who started a Gurdjieffian chicken farming business in the Thames upper reaches …after he, Cecil, met Bennett in the Ukraine as a secret service agent for the navy, who told Cecil ,thence Ivor, about this wonderful carpet seller with alcoholic tendencies. The chicken farm didnt work out…it might have been Swyre Farm where Bennett taught, but my conversations with Ivor about those times were only fleeting..
anyway..
somwhere in here there’s references to ouspensky/bennett/gurdjieff and lewis..by way of cecil lewis reminiscences.
http://books.google.com/books/about/All_my_yesterdays.html?id=Iu4dAQAAIAAJ
Ahh Russia the mystic east, the magi, meetings with remarkable……. ..nahh three men in a boat was more like Ivor told it.. full of good humour and old school charm…
Re the Teertha thing, yeah, I was the ‘other Teertha’. There’s always an ‘other’ guy, sort of the silent doppleganger thing.
Martyn — re your consciousnarse ritual, Crowley would have saluted you for the girlfriend’s arse thing, Gurdjieff for the insults, and Osho for the walk in nature, so sounds like you’re on the right track with the ‘three wise men’s gifts’.
Lokesh — thanks for the Osho-on-Crowley on the back porch anecdote. Since Osho was a sort of early version of Google himself, I was always surprised at what appeared to be his complete silence on Crowley, so these bits of info coming in haven’t surprised. The sannyasin who found the ‘Buddha-Disease’ link (‘Swami’), mentioned that he thought he remembered Osho citing Crowley one other time, but couldn’t place it.
Anyway the guy I always thought who wrote best about Crowley (in a popular way) was Robert Anton Wilson, the last of the Altered States three magi to go (pre-deceased by Leary and McKenna). Wilson contributed to a good book put together by Christopher Hyatt, called ‘Rebels and Devils: The Psychology of Liberation’, that featured contributions by Osho, Crowley, Leary, the physicist-ceremonial magician Joseph Lisiewski, the ‘chaos-magician’ Phil Hine (who politely declined to review my book), and Austin Osman Spare, amongst others.
http://www.originalfalcon.com/b-rebels_devils.php
Yes, and if a guru isn’t a smack head or an alkie what kind of guru is he anyway. As Osho points out in his famous zen bullshit stories ….once enlightened one returns to the marketplace with a bottle of booze in one’s hand.
If anyone has even a vague idea of what this is supposed to signify please comment
cheers Teertha .(glad you’re the other one, cos i would’ve never uttered those words otherwise ! )
if you want to open up an audience for your writings and you happen to visit london, then why not give these guys a call… they have recently had interesting soirees filled with anarcho/ liberatory discussions , events, etc..
http://idler.co.uk/academy/
must dash …arse in nature awaits…
lokesh .. if its anything to do with drinking then the irish must be involved somewhere…. and i have it on good authority and i kid you not when i tell yee that there’s this woman in ireland ,… whom i listened to drivel on in a front room right on the isolated Westport seafront. in 2009.( i was there avoiding people as usual but the local veggy shop had a hand written note which i could not ignore amongst the lentils about the inner proof of truth…which in Ireland runs at about 5% most evenings ).. so anyway under a cloud-skimming sky surrounded by the most stunning verdant empty silent watery and mountain landscapes..right by St Patricks mount , this advaeater turns up and proceeds to warble on to a hushed sitting room of 15 people how she is living in the truth….and of course someone asks her ..how did IT happen…and she replies cool as a daisy in her customary 163 miles per hour Irish soft tones (they all speak like they’re either on uppers or downers out there.)…’Well now.. I was out with some friends on a summers party at the pub , and I was drinking a can of Heineken, and then half way through the can everything started to dissolve , …thoughts,…. me..so much so that my friends thought I had taken ill with the drink ..you know….’ and i was seeing .stars fall around me in the bright sunlight…
I can say that both I and my then partner, also a sannyassin Ma, thought to ourselves , you couldn’t make it up could you….
if anyone wants know more about this advaitdrinker woops i mean advaita teacher .. she’s here.
http://www.jackieokeeffe.com
…and yes , i didnt buy the book but we went back to watching the clouds…for all i know they may have been filming an episode of father ted that night….
oh yes and now she lives in costa rica….how nice for her…
and this weeks $1000 question…
why are lovers of truth such onerous, meaningful, erm…fuckwits ….?
answers as always on a ….
did i miss yet again? Could I care less yet again? Is this story endless or beguinnesslessness?… ermm i’ll have a half, your round…
“once enlightened one returns to the marketplace…”. Lokes- whether with booze or babes under one’s arm, it doesn’t matter. the point being: once enlightened, it ALL doesn’t matter… so booze up, snort up, fuck up, whatever; one realizes that this physical world is a joke, all bullshit- go for it all or stay in a cave facing a wall for the rest of your life- it don’t matter!!!
lokesh,
that`s an interesting one about the zen bull with the sage going into town with a bottle of wine.
altho` plenty of folk who still identify drug taking and drinking with being on the “lefthand path”,or being “maguses of humanity”and so on,and they may imagine that this image of the sage with a bottle promotes the idea that the drunken,tripped out “magus” is somehow achieving something really out of the ordinary and special….
i find that when they ease off the drugs,if they can,which usually they cant,their self-important drug-induced fantasies about being ” maguses doing vital work” and suchlike usually subside,and they become “ordinary”.
i would suggest that the return of the taoist with his bottle to the market place is,rather ,an image of ordinariness,that the “sage”is ,in the final stage, just like everybody else,rather than that he is achieving something special by being a lefthand magus getting whacked off his face doing big work for humanity etc etc.
Dharmen — yes, no evidence that Gurdjieff ‘drank himself to death’. He was either 77 or 83 when he died, depending on the Moore or Patterson date of birth theory, and the doctor who performed the autopsy ‘would find every interior organ in Gurdjieff’s body wasted down to minimal function’ (Moore), so clearly he was dying of old age. But yes, he loved his brandies.
As for Crowley, he didn’t croak in poverty (another myth). He died with a box stuffed with around 400 GBP under his bed (moola intended for publishing, about 10,000 GBP in equivalent present day worth). He was, however, addicted to heroin. The heroin was originally prescribed to him by a doctor for his asthma (during a time when heroin could be gotten over the counter, prior to the dangerous drug act of 1920). Bayer actually originally marketed heroin as a ‘sedative for coughs’, scroll down a bit to see an old image of the advertisement here:
http://www.whale.to/a/weed_booze.html
Re Osho’s death, another odd bit of info I stumbled on during research was that the CIA did some ‘sorcery’ on Fidel Castro (according to a Senate investigation) by putting ‘chemicals’ in the soles of his shoes to cause his beard to fall out and thus ‘destroy’ his charisma. (Committee to study gov. operations, concerned alleged assassination plots, U.S. senate, ’76; found in O’Keefe, ’82). I did not have time to develop this particular line of research but intend to for 2nd edition, maybe next year — I do devote a section in the book to Osho’s demise, including mention of the ‘black magic attack’ Osho claimed was happening, in relation to recent DMILS research discussed by Rupert Sheldrake and others, where parapsychology tests have ‘statistically proven’ that we can influence others by the power of thought alone (as in black magic attacks, everything from low grade ‘love spells’ to aggressive sorcery, the usage of which traces back to Sumeria/ancient Egypt). That said, I don’t offer any definitive conclusion on Osho’s last days. I treat it as a type of Zen koan.
Lokesh — a good example of the ‘bottle of wine’ guru would be Chogyam Trungpa, though in his case his favourite ‘come to the marketplace beverage’ was a highball of gin.
Martyn — I was in London this past March, gave two book-signings and talks, one at Watkins, the other at a pub called ‘The Moot with No Name’ (sponsored by Atlantis Bookshop). For the latter I didn’t realize at the time it was a pub; walked into a hall with about 40 people all sitting at tables with an ale in front of them. Hell, best audience I ever had.
teertha …rupert sheldrake is a catholic so he would think that wouldn’t he….if he can’t control people with his catholic thoughts then…scare them … endless mind numbing pointless verbiage type thoughts like an academic da vinci code…about the occult, and salvation from an unseen man who lives in the sky…i always thought his children looked a bit scared of him in the family photos and wondered what the hell Jill Purce was doing with him…Black Magic.. mmm nice especially the coffee creams and the caramels.. try a box next time you are in the UK (apologies for the chococult associations there)..
cheers ..
teertha, on a more serious note you may already know that Lawrence Blair and his brother Lorne investigated shamanic stuff/esoteric stuff in their voyage through Indonesia financed by Ringo Star. Lawrence Blair was a boyfriend of Shunyo (Diamond Days)
http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/movie/pid/6681734/a/Ring+Of+Fire%3A+An+Indonesian+Odyssey+Boxed+Set.htm
Lawrence Blair is the author of Rhythms of Vision and popularised the notion of the hundredth monkey effect in that book, taken up by lyall watson, and sheldrake.It was not a theory that had an actual basis in observed data,though other scientists have corroborated similar stuff in the wonderful world of animals.
enjoy
the 100th monkey story is another one of highly dubious scientific veracity(check it for yourself)that has found its way into the newage canon as an unassailable truth,and if you mention its dubiousness to your average sannyasin or newager,you get the kind of looks that imply that you might have just offered a bacon sandwich to a rabbi at the wailing wall.
re. wineshop maguses.
old drunkpa seems to have hit the wineshops quite soon after arriving
in india after escaping from tibet.
and who could blame him? that was a horrific journey.family and friends gone,murdered,lost etc and suddenly a refugee.
at one level he was a harddrinking”crazy wisdom”teacher using everything,including booze,drugs and the local talent to propel his message.
at another level, he was another displaced,traumatised refugee.his family and friends victims of genocide and violent hardship and himself in severe culture and future shock.not to mention his(by modern standards) inhuman and brutal upbringing.
of course,he and his followers will always tell you that the message and the dharma is the important thing.
maybe its a matter of taste,but i find that kind of marginalisation of facets of the human being`s story unsatisfying.
trungpa put people in power who were extremely dangerous.
trungpas successor,osel tendsin,an american,knowing that he had aids,infected as many as 11 unwitting followers.he claimed that trungpa told him the dharma would protect others from transmission of the disease.
there was certainly some kind of misunderstanding.
this man became,by todays laws, a serial murderer,all the while having his masters support and believing he was “transmitting”(existence`s dark sense of humour,here) the highest teachings known to man.
crazy wisdom?
or just drug and alcohol induced spiritual delusion?
its a no-brainer.
the sheela story has some echoes.
both trungpa and osho used the same reason for installing such out and out nutters.
that they were the only ones that could do the job.
in every street in every town everyday,people fuck up personally,interpersonally,financially and healthwise from doing to much alcohol and drugs.
crazy wisdom maguses on the lefthand path?
could just be the most outlandish and extreme form of denial ever invented by substance abusers.
i guess all the maguses were in many ways old guys in a new world.
they probably needed a hit of something to get themselves psyched-up to deal with the fact they were out of their depth a bit….
osho`s mum and dad only slept together once a year,apparently.
thats quite a leap to sexguru in one lifetime.
gurdjieff was clearly a man from a man`s world,sitting in his local chaishop and turkish bath with a bunch of hairy guys in smelly sheepskin jackets boasting about the size of their moustaches….
can you imagine his views on women drivers for example?
i bet there were no gays in outbackistan,either.
and al crowleys parents were plymouth brethren.
what were they like?
well,they would make an afternoon with the jehovas witnesses seem like a weekend with the grateful dead.
Teertha,
I apologise for my “anything to make a buck” comment.” Obviously this does not apply to you.
Didn’t Gurdjieff once throw Crowley out saying his “energy was dirty.”
Actually the existence of Satan and the possibility of Satanism are core Catholic beliefs stemming from the time of the Apostles. Jewish beliefs about Satan are vaguer. Roughly the Catholic teaching is like this…..in the same way it is “possible” for someone to contact Buddha or Osho even though they are dead, so it is “possible” to contact Satan. This is the basis of witchcraft. The Catholic teaching is that a nature spirit such as Pan, which I believe C once invoked, is a Satanic spirit…….you see Satan lies and presents himself as a benign spirit such as Pan.
There certainly used to be people who considered themselves witches….see books by C L’Estrange Ewen who chronicled many English witchcraft trials. Or try M Summers “Witchcraft and Black Magic.”
Another book confirming that there were people who considered themselves witches is “The age of arsenic;: Being an account of the life, trial, and execution of Catherine Montvoisin, known as La Voisin, and of her vile associates and credulous … in the reign of King Louis XIV of France” by
William Branch Johnson.
There are Bastille trial transcripts showing that children were murdered by La Voisin as she called upon Satanic spirits such as Asmodeus. You see you have to commit a serious sin in order to establish your relationship with Satan or his minions.
Anyway, I am not an expert, but it sounds like Crowley was doing something like this though not in the same league as La Voisin.
I am less sympathetic to the 1960s than you.
i have seen truth and its utterly naked…
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
Chogyam ‘Drunkpa’? A good one, sort of like Drunkpa Kunley.
I remembered that name Lawrence Blair, I think he wrote the intro to Shunyo’s book. I was reading in there the other day about the time Osho was lecturing (I think it was in ’89) and some guy started laughing and it caught on and everyone kept laughing and Osho said ‘this has gone beyond the joke’. The laughter didn’t stop and so Osho just got up and walked out. Strange story, a great example of disciples thinking they are following a master’s edict (in this case, ‘laugh, dance, celebrate’) when in fact (on that occasion) they were just being ‘ee-stupid’. Perhaps a great overall metaphor for organized religion.
And on the matter of a teaching fossilizing into a religion, scanning back on some earlier threads here I noted the one on Vasant Joshi’s ‘Luminous Rebel’. I was looking forward to that book but found it disappointing, for reasons similar to Lokesh’s views expressed in that thread. One reason I sought to highlight the parallels between Osho and Gurdjieff/Crowley was that the latter two were such vivid examples of living paradox, and the open attempt to synthesize opposites (their ‘success’ notwithstanding). It seems that the failure of religion is largely the failure to embrace paradox, and to then enforce standards on human nature that are hopelessly unrealistic, hence all the rampant hypocrisy in clergy.
Gurdjieff’s pictorial image for his Institute featured the dual symbolism of ‘angel’ and ‘devil’, pictured here…
http://www.gurdjieff.org/design.jpg
…which was all part of his ideas relating to ‘reciprocal maintenance’ and the specific functionality of all aspects of existence. The problem with Abrahamic spirituality is that it divides (in order to conquer), thus rejecting half of existence, all beginning with the serpent in Genesis. (Recall Osho’s press interview in ’85, ‘The Last Testament’, where he said that the Genesis Serpent should be worshiped in every church and synagogue, and that Yahweh should be ‘behind the bars’). Crowley explored both theurgy (high or white magic) and Solomonic Goetic magic, which is working directly with very heavy energies. But he wasn’t stupid about it. He was working along alchemical lines, toward the ‘mysterious conjunction’, or resolution of opposites. He was doing his bit to oppose two thousand+ years of the religiously engineered ‘split’ within the human psyche. He said that all that wild and lurid stuff in the Book of Revelation was something that was stuggling to emerge from collective intelligence, but that wasn’t being allowed to, hence the whole thing was interpreted as terrifying (seven-headed dragons, etc). I was talking with a friend the other day who was relaying a recent Ayahuasca trip that involved serpents (as they so often do), which was originally seen as a symbol for the joining of opposites — the Arab/Jew resolution of the inner planes.
I think the problem with the sanitized view of Osho (as in Vasant Joshi’s book) is that it begins to generate a certain momentum that over time will end up with Osho being an icon representing the head of a particular religion. The very thing he railed against, he will be turned into. It will be how Tibetans look back ten centuries to their earlier gurus, and they don’t see human beings, they see ‘gods’ who incarnated as humans. They even claim that their first king, who was probably not much more than a Barack Obama-type, was the incarnation of a ‘dhyani-buddha’ (a Buddhist archangel). Such a figure, once deified, only serves to make the average seeker feel shameful about their failure to ‘match up’. And off we go running naked from ‘God’ again.
Crowley once wrote that a mystic who crosses the ‘great divide’, or ‘abyss’ of ego-transcendence, goes to live in the ‘City of Pyramids’. Gurdjieff of course said he taught ‘esoteric Christianity’ which he said came ‘from Egypt’. Then Osho decreed all those black pyramids be built near his death. Just a bunch of Da Vinci code crap? Perhaps. Probably. But still a bit more interesting than the average neo-advaita satsang.
Some great posts from you guys…. most enjoyable.
Gurdieff was a heavy boozer and felt guilty about his womanizing towards the end of his sojourn on planet earth.
I’m not so hot on Osho quote, but this one I really do find inspirational, especially seeing as how I am, amongst many other things, a poker player.
”Put everything at stake. Be a gambler!
Risk everything, because the next moment is not certain,
so why bother?
Why be concerned?
Live dangerously,
live joyously.
Live without fear,
live without guilt.
Live without any fear of hell,
or any greed for heaven.
Just live.”
Teertha . . thanx for sharing . . these are real revelations for me / many like me . .
http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/v2/play.php?id=152500
Truth seeking made into major bollywood film .. watch now….
Teertha wrote “Crowley explored both theurgy (high or white magic) and Solomonic Goetic magic, which is working directly with very heavy energies. But he wasn’t stupid about it.”
teertha,
hairothedogyam drunkpa ginpoche
was the full tibetan boozist title, i believe.
for myself,i enjoyed quaffing a few glasses of chang with the local tib boozists in their puja room that doubled as a saloon,when i was up in the himalaya.
they were good lads.
om mane padme hic….
i had never seen gurdjieffs logo before.
oddly,it looks rather like a thoth crowley/harris tarot card.
i think you are probably right about “da vinci code crap” as you put it.
and saying that something is a “bit more interesting than the average neo-advaita satsang” is pretty faint praise,indeed.
some of those advaitising guys need a bit of crazy wisdom,if you ask me.
egghead tolle,for example looks like he could do with a few pints of lager to loosen him up a bit,maybe undo the top button of his shirt.slip off his cardigan and get his rocks off at a rave or something….
Teertha wrote :”Crowley explored both theurgy (high or white magic) and Solomonic Goetic magic, which is working directly with very heavy energies. But he wasn’t stupid about it. ”
I think I would take becoming a heroin addict as evidence of stupidity.
I would also take allowing your child to die of neglect as evidence of stupidity if not malignity.
btw.didnt rupert sheldrake get knifed by a japanese guy in santa fe whilst delivering a lecture on thought transference?
it appears that the assailant claimed that sheldrake was using him as a guinea pig in his mind control experiments that he had been conducting on homeless people,of which he had been one.
i assume he was just a nutter,or did did sheldrakes “provable experiments” in DMILS involve homeless people ?
i reckon i could handle baphomet,beelzebub or even a few geman cultists in a bit of a ruck on the astral plane,but armed DIY samurais in real life?
scary!
alokjohn — The Gurdjieff-Crowley meeting is one of those ‘blind men in a room with a donkey’ affair, seen in utterly different lights depending one whose agenda gains upper hand. I wrote a chapter on the meeting, and a few months ago put it up on my website, complete with a few photos:
http://www.ptmistlberger.com/why-remarkable-men-rarely-meet.php
(The ‘Ambassador from Hell’ was a term Gurdjieff once used in referring to himself, when writing a letter to his student A.R. Orage).
Re Satanism, my earlier remark should have specified the Church of Satan (as founded in ’66 by LaVey). Yes, Satanic stuff is of course much older. Crowley’s main work however was similar to Abremalin, who insisted that a magician (‘shaman’ to use the more currently hip term) cannot mess with lower energies until he first establishes some sort of contact with his deep self, or as he called it, the ‘Holy Guardian Angel’. The Zen equivalent term is satori. The magician is supposed to get satori first (of whatever degree), and then and only then he can start harnessing lower energies to craft his life.
The modern term for ‘harnessing lower energies’ is the ‘art of manifestation’. You probably remember all that legend about Renaissance magi working in the circle to get these out of control spirits to work for him. The magus was supposed to be clear first, before he did this work. The Faustian archetype is of the magus who reverses the order: he says, gimme the goods first, and then I’ll get clear later. Let me use ‘The Secret’ now, and I’ll worry about satori later. But it doesn’t work that way, and that’s why ‘manifestation’ work often fails or backfires in strange ways (And stats back that up: I recall reading somewhere that 75% of lottery winners are more unhappy five years after their haul than they were before, because all the extra energy of the money gets injected into their already screwed up relationships, which just enhances the screwup).
Re witchcraft, I also wrote a chapter on that (for another book, unfinished), if you’re interested in wading through the tedium:
http://www.ptmistlberger.com/essays-ii.php
A lot of that stuff relates to projected sexual deviance, something Freud started to get a handle on, and Crowley had a lot to say about. But I still think Osho went furthest in terms of creating a culture where people who achieve some sense of comfort with their bodies.
funny some people put up quotes from osho and don’t even know what they mean, right lokesh? regarding crowley and co. the Dalai Llama practices white magic, there are black magicians and white magicians and if i remember osho correctly he said that these so called “arts” were nothing more than another trap and not to get sucked into them, to see it for what it really is and move beyond.. seems no one told that to Dalai Llama and his gang.
macmurphy..ive been trying to tell that Jap-sheldrake story here , the last 24 hours..but my post is suspended ,awaiting moderation, which is an unlikely event as i prefer a good bit of Gurdjieffian ,Crowleyian ,Oshoan indulgence any day…Sheldrake actually felt sorry for the guy, in an interview he said his attacker was utterly telepathetic.
Teertha i’ve read every single line of your blog ,give or take a few hierophants, but i couldn’t find the chat up lines which georgi and aleister used repeatedly to spread their, erm, influence with..So i’m just going to roll with ‘hello, would you like to see my masonic wadge’ and ‘ Gosh I hate religion and all those goody goody archangels, don’t you?’ More Gin?
and ‘what number are you ?’ I’d say a ten !
they remind me of characters from those 60′s Hammer Horror films…with fainting girls and intense eyes…and a terrible script with no laughs…
which of course makes it all the funnier…
‘..don’t go in there… no don’t its the solomonic delicatessen cum knocking shoppe, i warned you..you will release the dark forces ..bagels and bagels of the stuff….aieeeee.. dada dada ddaaaaaaa
teertha,
its a pity that there is no reliable info about the meeting of the maguses.
a drinking and drugging contest would have made the best copy.
a challenge of killing goats by thought transference would have been another possibility.hey,did i hear rightly that it was gurdjieff who started that “men who stare at goats” thing by claiming he could kill them at a distance of 100 yards using thought power alone?
re nott and the rest..
it is very difficult to get any sense out of “close disciples”at all,it seems.
look at all the party line stuff written about osho.
as you say,the disciples kind of collude with the master in creating a sort of virtual reality simulcra that other disciples try hard to imitate and emulate but end up making complete mugs of themselves…
mugged off by by a magus.
how daft can you get?
Hey Martyn — loved your movie. Good timing too, I may be writing a screenplay adapted from the book. Some people have expressed interest. Maybe I should seek Bollywood financing?
jaycpennie now l get it / that creativity & arts are not the same . . thanx dear
osho played well into the myth of gurdjieff,too.
he said that gurdjieff was a “very capable man”,being able to drink so heavily.
this echoed g`s idea of his own “conscious”drinking.
so g wasn`t just some old guy losing it who needed more and more booze,caffeine and nicotine to keep his mojo working,he was onto some kind of pissed-up superconscious thing.(dont forget that the abysmal “beelzebub” book was written under the influence of this cocktail).
this ties in with oshos advice to veeresh about how to get people off drugs:
have them meditate and by and by the drugs will “drop”
(“statistically proven” by sheldrake,maybe?)
“conscious drinking”
“meditation magically curing addiction”
trungpa and tensin`s idea that the dharma will protect from aids.
is there a pattern here?
so osho maybe mistook extreme capability for simply just high tolerance.
a fairly basic error.
i hope he didnt make the same mistake with valium and gas.
do you remember “batman” on the telly in the 60s.when batman would always miraculously manage to escape from being hung,eaten by sharks, dropped in a vat of acid or whatever?
kids started copying him in their rooms and killing and maiming themselves
so they used to have to an anouncement at the end of the episode warning: “dont try this at home,kids”
maguses,gurus,master blasters, conscious drinkers,puffers,sexers et al should maybe carry a similar disclaimer
yes teertha thats great…go for wet Tshirts and saris, waterfalls and weird ensemble dance routines every five minutes and large flared trousers on the heroes….then give it all some high contrast colour scheme… and don’t forget the evil villains who get clobbered in a batman style finish… you could turn it into a nintendo game too !points for the amount of alcohol consumed , ‘stop’ exercises, all finishing off with a gurdjieffian car crash racing game..
on the other hand i could personally recommend a lady who does the tibetan lama/ osho /gurdjieff movements combo…
if it doesnt make you smile…it ain’t spiritual…
Hi Teertha,
I had a look at your chapter on witchcraft. I am afraid I skimmed through it. Your arguments are broadly familiar to me and twenty years ago I would have agreed with you (see how old I am!).
You write “That all of them, Witches or non-Witches, were falsely convicted, or at the least unjustly tried, certainly by modern judicial standards, is more or less accepted at face value here.”
This is the conventional view. I would have agreed with it once but not now.
If you read the three books I mentioned it is clear there were people who considered themselves to be witches or sorcerers. The story of La Voisin is quite horrifying; there is just too much detail for it to be made up.
I acknowledge most people would say it is impossible to harm someone by sticking pins in a clay figure and repeating incantations. But this belief rests on the Newtonian concept of the universe that the universe only consists of empty space and particles; modern physics would reject this. So who knows, maybe witchcraft and sorcery can be used to harm people.
I bet you did not know that Papua New Guinea has a Sorcery Act in force!
Under the Sorcery Act 1971, a person who does any act of forbidden sorcery may be imprisoned for five years.
See ‘Sorcery Witchcraft and Christianity’ by Zocca and Urame published by Melanesian Institute.
I find the subject quite interesting as to whether or not there is such a thing as sorcery/witchcraft, and I am inclined to think there is, though of course there would be many charlatans.
By the way the Malleus was never endorsed by the Catholic Church. One source said reading it then was the equivalent of reading crime and horror stories today. I think the book was not used in English witchcraft trials. To get a conviction in England you had to prove the accused had a “familar spirit.”
I really do not think the 1960s view that all witches were innocent herbalists, healers midwives etc, is borne out by the evidence.
RPM — I think the ‘kill at 100 yards’ thing came from Gurdjieff’s time in Tibet (he claimed he was there from 1900-02, thereabouts). While there he said he was trained in psychokinetic powers. His exact words were:
“…The development of my thoughts had been brought to such a level that by only a few hours of self-preparation I could from a distance of tens of miles kill a yak; or, in twenty-four hours, accumulate life-forces of such compactness that I could in five minutes put to sleep an elephant.” (‘Life is Real, Only Then, When I Am’)
He went on to admit that despite these powers he could not sustain self-remembering at that time, so he considered himself not yet truly awake. Then in 1911 he renounced his ‘powers’ so as to do the ‘bodhisattva’ thing, that is, dedicate his life to a cause greater than himself. He explained all that in his first book, ‘Herald of the Coming Good’, which he later repudiated and try to have all copies destroyed. Some think the book revealed his Machiavellian side too clearly, hence his discomfort with it.
Re the ‘meeting of the Magi’, what I usually find funniest are the endless ways in which Crowley is demonized, even by a sincere guy like Nott. At least Osho recognized that Crowley had some legitimate insight; that alone marks Osho apart from the vast mob of Crowley-lynchers.
alok john,
you`re probably right.
not all those witches were herbalists and reiki healers.a lot of them were probably running houses of ill-repute,distilling their own hooch,distributing ergot,fencing a bit of knocked-off stuff,pheasants,loaves of bread etc,answering back to their husbands etc and riding their broomsticks without tax and insurance.
ok,maybe they cut a few corners on the legal front,but being tortured to death for that stuff? it was a bit harsh,wasn`t it?
i`m not a crowley lyncher,but i must admit,i`m not a huge fan either.the thoth deck is great,but as far as infernal writings to usher in a new age go,for me,william blakes` “the marriage of heaven and hell”,the proverbs of hell etc ,was the benchmark in content and style. crowley clearly tried to mimic it, but couldnt quite pull it off.
i didnt know that gurdjieff could put an elephant to sleep in 5 minutes.
did he get it to read “beelzebub`s tales”? it worked on me,so maybe old g did know a few magic tricks after all.
alok,re your aversion to the 60s. i think maybe its time to embrace your jungian shadow? i think you and egghead tolle could swap your cardigans and slippers for some leathers and cowboy boots, and let rip,head down to new orleans for mardi gras on a coupla harleys,hire a coupla hookers,drop some acid and really,like do your thing and get into it man….dig?
Alok — just to respond to some of the points you’ve raised. I shall do so in good scholarly point format.
1. Above you wrote that Crowley was ‘stupid’ for acquiring a heroin addiction.
To be accurate, the cause of Crowley’s heroin addiction was his bronchial disease and asthma. In 1920 his doctor, Harold Shaw, prescribed heroin for him to control his asthma (this man had been his doctor since 1898). Heroin was available over the counter as a pain-control medicine at that time (see my link posted above). By around 1910 the physiologically addictive qualities of heroin were beginning to be recognized, but many doctors continued to prescribe it up till around the mid-1920s.
Now Crowley was aware of the physiologically addictive nature of heroin, but decided to accept the doctor’s prescription anyway because at that point he had broad experience with drugs, mainly hashish and opium from his entheogenic experiments with Allan Bennett twenty years before, and certain sex-magick rites. He figured he could overcome any addictive factors. What he didn’t properly understand (as many in that day didn’t) was that opium and hash are limited mainly to psychological addiction, not physical. Heroin however has a powerful physiological grip. Crowley desperately wanted relief from his bronchitis and asthma and so didn’t hesitate to use the doctor’s prescribed heroin, thinking that he could overcome any addiction. He wrote that people who can’t overcome addictions are ‘weaklings’. So the ultimate cause of his addiction was not stupidity, but a combination of medical ignorance and Crowley’s overconfidence/arrogance. His addiction ultimately proved deeply humbling, in which his chief feature (arrogance) was getting worn down.
2. You also wrote that (twice) that Crowley let ‘one of his children die of neglect’.
Crowley had several children by different women. Only two died young, both baby girls. The first one, Nuit, died in 1906, not yet 2 years old, of typhoid fever. Crowley was traveling at the time through North America on his way back to England. The girl was with Crowley’s then-wife, Rose Kelly, in Burma (Rangoon) when she contracted the disease and died. She was not ‘neglected’, except insofar as questionable sanitation capacities of those times contributed.
The second, named Poupee, was born in February 1920 when Crowley was with Leah Hirsig (his longest relationship, which lasted about 5 years). The child was sickly from the beginning and died 8 months later, at a hospital in Palermo, Sicily. I have looked into the research of Crowley’s main biographers, all except one of whom were not Thelemites (Crowley’s religion) and all of whom are respected journalists (with the one Thelemite being a PhD and statistics professor). None accuse him of ‘child-neglect’; and most mention Crowley’s passages in his Confessions where he greatly lamented the loss of the child and felt powerless to help her. [Sources: Sutin (2000), p. 285; Booth (2000) p. 372; Kaczynski (2010) p. 365.]
btw — I hope you’re not drawing info from John Symonds; he was Crowley’s first biographer and is known to have developed a strong bias against him — Regardie, formely Crowley’s secretary and a very lucid biographer himself, denounced Symonds’ work as ‘malicious’ and ‘contemptible distortion’).
3. ‘You write “That all of them, Witches or non-Witches, were falsely convicted, or at the least unjustly tried, certainly by modern judicial standards, is more or less accepted at face value here.” This is the conventional view. I would have agreed with it once but not now.
If you read the three books I mentioned it is clear there were people who considered themselves to be witches or sorcerers. The story of La Voisin is quite horrifying; there is just too much detail for it to be made up.’
It appears you didn’t get past the first few paragraphs of my article. In the 6th paragraph, I wrote:
‘The Old Testament, of course, was not written in English, but Hebrew. Exodus 22:18 in Hebrew reads (transliterated with vowels), M’khashephah lo tichayyah. This means, essentially, ‘you will not allow a khashephah to live.’ A khashephah is a ‘spell-caster’; a more currently accurate English term for it is probably ‘sorcerer’ or ‘sorceress’. The ‘spell-caster’ referred to in the writing of Exodus was a hostile spell-caster, not the benign Goddess or Nature-worshipper of Neo-Pagan traditions. (And indeed, some recent editions of the Bible have replaced the Exodus 22:18 word ‘Witch’ with ‘sorceress’.) In older times, such malefic spell-casters were common, and found in many cultures (just as they are today, particularly in African or Caribbean nations). Just as commonly, their power was believed to be real and they were often hunted down. Contrary to some popular views, the practice of Witch-hunting, while largely eradicated from Western Europe by the late 18th century, still crops up occasionally in the world. As recently as 2008 eleven people in Kenya were accused of Witchcraft and burnt to death, and in Papua New Guinea, the execution of witches, often via burnings, is still done on occasion up to current times.’
So yes, I’m fully aware that hostile spell-casters have existed since ancient times, and certainly still do.
4. You wrote, ‘By the way the Malleus was never endorsed by the Catholic Church. One source said reading it then was the equivalent of reading crime and horror stories today. I think the book was not used in English witchcraft trials. To get a conviction in England you had to prove the accused had a “familar spirit.”’
The Malleus of course was written by two Germans (it was called Der Hexenhammer). Most witchcraft trials took place in Germany and France (as did most werewolf trials). England executed less than 1,000 witches by recent estimates, and most were hanged, not burned). It was the Germans, especially, who had an appetite for torturing and burning witches (and the French for doing the same to lycanthropes or ‘werewolves’, those most of these appear to have been psychotic serial killers forced under torture to concoct lurid confessions). Witch-hunting was good business, in general, for many factions.
5. You wrote, ‘I really do not think the 1960s view that all witches were innocent herbalists, healers midwives etc, is borne out by the evidence.’
In the article I stress that ‘modern witchcraft’ (‘Wicca’) is largely an innocuous new age nature cult, but that this is mostly a post 1950s thing (after Gardner wrote ‘Witchcraft Today’ in ’54. Gardner, incidentally, was influenced by Crowley and stole some of Crowley’s writings in crafting the first Wiccan initiation rites).
Prior to the 20th century there is no good evidence that organized witchcraft existed, as a European phenomena, except as a lurid projected fantasy (witches flying to moonlight sabbats, eating babies, fornicating with the devil, and related nonsense). The historian Norman Cohn’s ‘Europe’s Inner Demons’ seems to have the best grasp of the historical picture on the matter, also good his James Sharpe’s ‘Instruments of Darkness’.
But ‘hostile spellcasters’ have certainly always existed, yes. (I think I saw one the other day trying to throw a pie in Rupert Murdoch’s face).
Martyn — I’d like to see a synchronized joint demonstration of Osho’s Dynamic Meditation, Gurdjieff’s Movements, and Crowley’s Gnostic mass. Now that would be good material for a Python skit.
it is very important to kill yaks at 20 miles… i cannot emphasize enough how this could improve humanity’s destiny, and at the same time make us all go ‘wooohhhh thats amazing’… and ‘gosh wish i could do that’…. like watching thoughts …but better to impress friends with.. though the yak thinks its a shit idea, and is planning to move down the road.
The great British Public ,and the world (beyond Frinton-by-the-Sea) needs to be reminded here of our gallant efforts to spread simultaneous mind reading and map reading skills in the British army, (though without the Yaks and without emphasising ones sexual conquests in the style of Messrs aleister and georgi porgi.)
see here…
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
these powers are of course next to nothing when compared to the ability of fellow egalitarian and fully transparently accessible seeker/teachers such as Ma Turiya von Hanover und Windsor (…book now ,for the Path of Proletarian to Prinzess ) and Harlem street boy (ex ?)druggy, Swami Veeresh..They have already developed psychically ‘gosh and marvellous’ powers, (of winding people up whilst taking money off them. AT THE SAME TIME ..).. not only that ..both Turiya and Veeresh can BORE a whole room of people TO DEATH….within a few minutes of opening their mouths.
now that’s scary…
alok.. you were warned weren’t you… we all told you didn’t we… don’t mess with the forces, we said… oh yes we did… and what did you say..’ i can handle it , you said..i went to an anglican-jewish primary school, St Moses and Mary’s (and open saturday afternoon’s gefilte fish delicatessen) …,you said, ….i’ve recanted in front of a benefits tribunal, you said,….. i know all about this stuff, you said,…… it doesn’t scare me…i can handle it. you said…
Now look what you’ve gone and done… you forced Mr T to respond to your incantfabulatory oral dismenufication line by line
If you will mess with the Book of Froth, via Sw T , then don’t be surprised when you lose the power of attention, and words turn your mind to putty.
‘Thus moot it be for Mr T,’ sayeth the oracle (or it might be the farcical, i’m never quite sure)
BTW Teertha, I of course knew all that , everybody in sannyas and yak friendly circles does..BUT what few people realise though is that , and this is very interesting, is that …when Crowley went to the corner shop for his heroin , he would often leap over the counter wheezing and coughing, looking intensely at the serving girl with his eyes (a lot of asthmatics have eyes like that during an attack) and say cool as a cucumber :
‘Hello my little flibbety gibbett of a serving girl, (wheeze cough splutter) ..i’m in league with devil ,(ahuuuuuu ahuurrrrr a coughhhh,, ahuuuuuur) ‘, as he clutched for support from the marble counter top of the pharmacists’s mahogany rococo table, bending over double in yet another display of his asthmatic and bedevilled powers.
at which point the manager’s voice from the back of the shop would fearlessly cry out….
‘Is that Mr Crowley again? What does he want this time the six fingered smack addict, give him his change and tell him to sword-orf and take his sleeping hierophant with him , or I’ll get the Constable on him.’
Teertha,
Briefly
Re heroin addiction….Is not arrogance a form of stupidity?
Re child died of
neglect…..this was from a TV documentary…..I am not expert.
I am sure you are right about modern Wicca being largely a harmless New Age cult
You write : “Prior to the 20th century there is no good evidence that organized witchcraft existed, as a European phenomena, except as a lurid projected fantasy (witches flying to moonlight sabbats, eating babies, fornicating with the devil, and related nonsense). The historian Norman Cohn’s ‘Europe’s Inner Demons’ seems to have the best grasp of the historical picture on the matter, ”
I just do not think Cohn is such a great historian. Prob witchcraft was not “organised”, but if you read the books I mentioned (which hardly anyone does) it seems probable that there were people who considered themselves to be witches.
Of course much depends on what you mean by ‘good evidence.’
PS Cohn wrote in the 50s and 60s I think. He was in US. He may not have known that the books I mentioned existed.
Also I think it was politically impossible then, as it is now, to say that there really were some women who considered themselves to be witches.
In Papua New Guinea sorcerers, mainly men, are often murdered by members of the public.
But the state does sometimes prosecute under the Sorcery Act.
For example, in 2006 two brothers were accused of practicing sorcery to cause the death of another man. Lae District Court found there was sufficient evidence including materials and witness accounts. The Court found the two men guitly of practicing sorcery that caused the death of another. Both were sentenced to three years in jail with hard labour.
Alok — “Re heroin addiction….Is not arrogance a form of stupidity?”
Have you never known an intelligent person who also was capable of showing arrogance on occasion? Intelligence is not synonymous with perfect humility. Osho himself was not exactly humble, and judging by his own account of his youthful years, was clearly capable of manifesting arrogance on occasion.
“Re child died of
neglect…..this was from a TV documentary…..I am not expert.”
I’d be cautious of those “documentaries”. There have been a few stupid documentaries done on Osho as well.
Re Crowley, this short ‘play’ written about the Beast is funny and informative:
http://www.culturecourt.com/Br.Paul/lit/CrowleyTrial.html
“PS Cohn wrote in the 50s and 60s I think. He was in US. He may not have known that the books I mentioned existed. Also I think it was politically impossible then, as it is now, to say that there really were some women who considered themselves to be witches.”
The last vestiges of the witchcraft act were only repealed in 1951 (‘the fraudulent medium’s act’). Wicca was extremely small and low profile when Cohn published his work in 1973. There was no problem with identifying witches, certainly historically. Wicca itself did not achieve a degree of acceptance in North America until 1985, after an important court case, and then again in 2007, when the military officially ‘allowed’ pentacles (the Wiccan symbol) on tombstones of Wiccan soldiers. (Even George W. Bush, that icon of tolerance, declared that witchcraft was ‘not really a religion’, and that the military should re-think admitting Wiccans to its ranks). It still has a long way to go, however, as the general public still falsely associates it with Satanism. Much of this is due to the pervasive influence of the entertainment industry. People love hysterical drama, in general, as it provides such a juicy distraction from their quietly desperate miserable lives.
Again — no one is arguing that malefic sorcerers have always existed. The question is around the *organization* of such ‘witches’. There is no evidence for any significant *organized* witchcraft prior to the 20th century. That does not mean that individual witches, or hereditary cases (common in Africa) have not existed. Of course they have. But apart from isolated cases, the vast majority of those tortured and killed were Christians accused by other Christians (for things like infidelity, unpaid rents, etc.) or were psychotic serial killers (such as in France’s werewolf cases). For every actual malefic spell-caster, there was probably 100 or more falsely accused. It was a type of mass-psychosis, a good example of which was the Salem trials, during which ‘spectral evidence’ was actually permitted as evidence on trial. Spectral evidence meant that if you had a vision, or ‘saw’ that someone was a witch by virtue of ‘seeing’ them in their witch-form ‘aura’, that could be used to convict someone.
Re Osho and the ‘malefic sorcery’ just before his death, what do you think of that whole matter?
Some ‘out there’ things have been suggested, including one wild theory that the guy who used to run the Tibetan Pulsing group, Dheeraj, was actually responsible for it. I stumbled upon this article several years ago, so I’m assuming it’s familiar to sannyasnews (the Osho akashic records):
http://www.n0by.de/2/a2z/Deeraj.htm
Martyn — you’ve got some comic-writing prowess. Should consider a novel spoofing the whole spiritual trip. Something sorely needed with all the seriousness we get into.
Incidentally, does anyone know what is happening with Devageet’s book? I heard rumor of its impending publication, but that was a while ago. Back in 1984, I was roommates with Devageet’s younger brother, Samayo, in an Osho communal house. (Not so young anymore, he would be in his mid-60s now, I think). Have fond memories of those days; we both smoked, Samayo a pipe, me cigs. The room used to be filled with smoke while Samayo dispensed good insider gossip to me (all of which, alas, I have forgotten). But my cigs were always in short order because Samayo’s eldest daughter kept bumming them. The house had 22 people, ten adults and twelve kids, of whom half a dozen were Samayo’s. My first day there I was assigned cooking duty. I served slightly burnt macaroni for 22 people, my burnt offering. One of Samayo’s kids, after a suitable pause of five seconds, declared, ‘this macaroni is crap!’ Ah, the so-so old days.
Teertha,
You may have missed this first time round, so as a thank you note and for all my fans here is a repost of the….
EuroVoshon Song Contest
Osho centres Europe (Oshow Fundation International ) are happy to announce the 91st EuroVoshon Song contest…Vote now for your favourite catchy tunes.
The votes are now being counted for the winners to represent Osho Centres in or near ..or near enough..
to Europe…
The following entries making it to the Oshovision Final on Sunday morning ……with the opening song lines below :
Lithuania… Bing Bang dupi doo I love you You love me Osho osho osho
Moldova……. You love me.. I love you ,sell the children tra la la
Armenia……… Happy happy Life is great Osho wheres my dinner you steal my plate ?
Germany……..Ha ha hee hee Vee love Osho, Vee are Free …bing dubi bang boo . Sing mit ze feelings . ’arbeit macht frei , high my love’
Italy……….. the tears of my love are just for you but i watch my love and meditate in my soul of deep feeling…(..get on with it ,Ed.)..and lallaa …..it’s all your fault…
France… Who are you? Osho where and why and if you are , I might know or there again i might not if i dont exist or do you ?…..lall lllaaalallla llaaaal lalala lalala lalalala.. (Sung intensely to the tune of La vie en
Rose…).
Holland …. Clip clop binggy Bee .Osho really nice guy actually, he’d buy you all a beer. Hoorrayy ! Chorus : Grab your balls and swing them la la lala..
Macedonia… (Still working on first line of translation….) Osho nice man
better than politicians here, they corrupt.Help us ..Osho please send money…lala lala..
United Kingdom ….Osho I would devote myself to you..oh lovely charming chap or even guru, person thing..but actually i’m English and that would be embar-ass-ing
Devageet ? oh yes… the role model for laurence olivier in marathon man…winner of Mr Ashram Jewish Dentist 1987.. the man who used to run a dental practice down in Redruth in Cornwall in the seventies? The same guy who told Anugito to stop worrying about the proposed takeover of KoHsuan’s assets in favour of an osho growth centre run by him…because Anugito was going to die of kidney disease soon, so what did he care ? Oh that Devageet… mr smarmy yitzak shamir sharon Devageet? ..mmmm? no I haven’t heard about him …sorry.
Teertha wrote “Re Osho and the ‘malefic sorcery’ just before his death, what do you think of that whole matter?
Some ‘out there’ things have been suggested, including one wild theory that the guy who used to run the Tibetan Pulsing group, Dheeraj, was actually responsible for it. I stumbled upon this article several years ago, so I’m assuming it’s familiar to sannyasnews (the Osho akashic records):
http://www.n0by.de/2/a2z/Deeraj.htm”
I was in Pune for the three weeks up to and including Osho’s death. I was there when Osho spoke about the black magic from a “CIA like organisation.” Devageet tried moving people around just before White Robe Brotherhood to try to find the source but without success.
I also did Tibetan pulsing for a few years in London in the late 90s. I think it was a sophisticated con. You’d get, in pairs, into incredibly uncomfortable positions, massaging each other’ gums.
I have read Anupamo’s article before. I am quite sympathetic to the overall tone, but I do not know if every sentence is correct.
I just do not know who was responsible for the black magic against Osho.
There were some very odd people around Osho when he was in the body, to say the least!
Martyn — you sound like you had a bad trip in Devageet’s dental chair. But you are a ‘Prem’ (as am I), so your lesson is to forgive. Or something like that.
Alok —
“I was in Pune for the three weeks up to and including Osho’s death. I was there when Osho spoke about the black magic from a “CIA like organisation.” Devageet tried moving people around just before White Robe Brotherhood to try to find the source but without success.”
Devageet again? Odd he cropped up twice in two unrelated conversation threads here.
Re the ‘malefic sorcery’, Dion Fortune, in her ‘Psychic Self-Defense’ (perhaps the main classic on the matter), stressed how ‘malefic forces’ are flying around all the time, and most often hit their target in a type of ricochete fashion — that is, the source they appear to be coming from is rarely the originator. I think in Osho’s case that applies well enough as metaphor. Like Socrates and Jesus, he clearly pissed off many, and the repercussions of that undoubtedly made their way to him, even if not in the form of CIA ‘men in black’ decked out in white robes.
Interesting how you were in the ashram at that highly charged time. I myself felt strongly pulled to get there throughout late ’89, but couldn’t get it together. Went there in early ’91, a year after he’d died, and the juice then was still very strong. They were still bringing out the empty chair, complete with air conditioner, during White Robe. I’m pretty out of touch (haven’t been back since ’91), so have no idea if that still goes on, or if not, when it stopped. I do fondly recall the ‘Zen pub’, although the port wine was godawful.
In some strange ways my fondest memory of the Pune ashram was when I was there in late ’85, of all times. (This was shortly after the Ranch had been mostly abandoned, and Osho was in Kulu-Manali). I was told not to go to India (Osho had decreed that no one should follow him there at that time), but like the rebel I was went anyway. I wandered around the north of India for a few weeks, doing the tourist thing (Taj Mahal, etc.), getting served lousy meals (including one memorable dish that featured a dozen or so live ants — I handed it back to the waiter, disgusted, who took the dish, shrugged, brushed off the ants with this hand, and handed it back to me). I eventually went to the ashram, which at the time was manned by a skeleton crew of around 20 sannyasins. I recall the weeds growing in Buddha hall, and the cracks in the floor. The old podium was still there, that Osho lectured on in the 70s. They used to show lecture-videos nightly, to our pitifully small group. One day in early ’86 word came that Osho was in Kathmandu and visitors could come. Me and a few others made a mad dash to Nepal, via train, plane, and automobile. Back then, 1 buck was good for around 30 Nepali rupees, so it was all very easy to negotiate on a practical level.
A year or so ago, I was amazed to discover that someone had video taped Osho’s daily ‘walk-by’ that he did on the grounds of the Soaltee Oberoi Hotel in Kathmandu throughout most of the month of February 1986, and had gone to the bother to post this video at YouTube (which is rapidly becoming the mainstream akashic records). I was further amazed to see myself in the video. I’m visible in the crowd at around the 7:18-23 time of the video.
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
You can see a Ma in purple swinging her hair as Osho approaches; I’m two or three people from her left. What was really strange about that video is that I have a photo of that exact moment. It was taken by some guy and dumped in a pile on a table at a bazaar somewhere in Kathmandu, which I discovered before leaving Nepal, shortly after Osho went to Greece. It’s been framed and on my wall for the past quarter century.
alok john you are throwing a lot of light . . I hope this reaction /response of mine is published here . .
“Actual Satanism itself, as founded by Anton LaVey and developed by Michael Aquino via his Temple of Set, is more innocuous than most suppose. (It’s mostly a materialist philosophy, a contrarian outgrowth of Christian dogma, all with a strong flavor of the absurd and a twinkle in the eye. And no, it does not involve itself in criminal acts of any sort). ”
Are you sure of that? Please read the book “Trance-formation of America” and check what it say about Aquino.
Sam.Ba. — I looked at that book some time in the late 90s, when I was investigating the ‘hidden history’ of the human race along with a secret and motley cabal of Internet dudes. We were heavy into Sitchin, Velikovsky, Bramley, the Annunaki, etc. I even went with a friend to Sedona, where we camped out one night near one of the ‘vortex’ sights to meditate and (why not) watch for UFOs. We were armed with two small lawn chairs, a pair of binoculars, and a bottle of Tequila. As the night wore on and the bottle emptied, our observational powers became duly compromised. Suddenly one of us pointed at the sky, enthralled by a tiny circular moving object with flashing lights. Alas, ’twas a 747.
The next night, continuing my shamanic (albeit hungover) ordeal, I slept out alone in the desert, along with the snakes, an air-mat, flashlight, and copy of William Cooper’s ‘Behold A Pale Horse’ (probably the most bizarre conspiracy book ever written). Cooper was a former Naval intelligence agent (so he claimed) who decided to expose government corruption and various evil agendas. As for Trance-formations, my initial sense about Cathy O’Brien was that she was insane. I think the main reason she avoided lawsuits was because she was considered to be completely mad. That said, it seems possible, even likely, that some of what she reported re MKUltra was true. Mad people often have a hold on some elements of truth, much like how much rumor often carries a trace of truth.
What are your thoughts on that?
As for Aquino, he was originally a student of LaVey but broke away after he gathered evidence that LaVey had lost the original inspiration behind the Church of Satan and had started to get greedy, demanding cash in return for higher initiations (where have we heard that before). Aquino then did a ceremony evoking the Devil for guidance, but the ‘entity’ that ‘showed up’ was the Egyptian god Set (the old god who had supposedly done battle with Osiris, cutting off the latter’s penis in a fit of pique). Aquino claimed that Set transmitted some info to him, the gist of which is that Set was never a bad guy, but rather represented the discrete psyche, the isolated ego-self, a necessary stage of spiritual evolution. This same guy then appeared in the Garden of Eden as ‘serpent’ (the same word in Hebrew means ‘teacher’), giving Adam/Eve a chance to grow up by gaining an ego-individuality. Yahweh was against this because it threatened his business, something like workers are apt to due when they seek to form a union and gain some leverage.
Anyway, that’s part of the so-called ‘Satanic’-Temple of Set’ and Gnostic view, and it was something echoed by Osho in some of his Oregon discourses. LaVey’s main intention was to counter Middle-America’s Christian values of ‘humility’ and ‘meekness’, etc., by promoting the opposite. When you look deeply into modern organized Satanism (which is smaller than most think), you see little more than a funky rebellion against Christian values.
That said, there are always mentally ill people who seek to attach themselves to whatever. Just as there are malefic spell-casters, so too there are those of ill-intent who have attached themselves to Satanism. Come to think of it, there were a few of those who attached themselves to Osho too.
Teertha . . you seem to be the sanest one here . . now . . dear . . thanx for your sharing . . it keeps me away from wondering . .
i have a 1225 page manifesto outlining my world vision available, phone Stavanger 666 for details.