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A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO CROWLEY BOOKS

The author would like to dedicate this Guide to his three Cats, in recognition of their constant Efforts to distract him from his Work.

This is a work in progress. The author welcomes comments and suggestions at julianus@kiva.net.

Aleister Crowley (1875 - 1947) is certainly the single most influential occult practitioner of the last century, as well as being the most controversial. His literary output is astonishing in both volume and variety, including poetry, drama, and fiction in addition to his core Magical writings. Since his writings have been drawn upon, often without acknowledgement, by nearly every occultist in the English-speaking world it behooves any person interested in Magick or occultism to have some direct acquaintance with Crowley's work. The problem is that so many of his more famous books are notoriously difficult for the reader, often despite Crowley's own attempts to clarify his ideas for the general public. Another problem is that in the course of one book he often makes reference to several others, which leads to the impression that you can't understand one Crowley book until you've read them all. Considering how much stuff is currently in print this is pretty daunting, to say the least!

I am more than familiar with the frustrations involved in exploring Crowley's writings. The first Crowley book I ever got indeed one of my first books on Magick of any kind was the old Dover edition of Magick in Theory and Practice and almost nothing in it made sense to me at the time. It wasn't until about four or five years later, around the time I joined the Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.) in fact, that I was able to get much out of the book. Now, nearly two decades after buying it, I find it to be the single best book on Magick ever written and a constant source of inspiration.

One of the main reasons for my initial difficulty was simply the lack of basic information about the book. Even today most people still don't know that Magick in Theory and Practice (MTP for short) was never intended to be a stand-alone work. It is in fact the third part of a four-part magnum opus simply titled Book Four. Had I known that simple fact I could have started with the earlier sections and saved myself a lot of puzzlement. It was my new brothers and sisters in the Order who provided this and many other useful pieces of information, which illustrates one of the principal obstacles for the beginner in many esoteric schools: the written tradition is of limited use without the oral tradition that explains it.

But not everyone interested in reading Crowley is part of a Thelemic order, or wants to be, and this Guide is intended to partly eliminate that difficulty. This is by no means a primer on Thelema (authors such as Lon Milo duQuette, Rodney Orpheus, and Gerald del Campo have all written fine books in that category) nor does it cover the whole of Crowley's writings. My intention is merely to suggest a handful of books that will be most useful to someone approaching Crowley for the first time, to clear up some of the complexity of his publishing schemes, and to

address the matter of multiple editions of the same book. This is especially vital since the O.T.O. has been issuing new and improved editions of many texts under the editorship of Hymenaeus Beta, the present Frater Superior of the order. Improvements range from useful Introductions and better proofreading to substantial restorations of material 'mislaid' by Crowley's printers. Many texts have also been expanded with additional material not included in the original publications. The new Book Four is the most extreme example of this: not only does it have all four parts in one volume for the first time but the restored passages make it far closer to the Crowley's original intentions than his own editions ever were.

So whether your intention is to ally yourself with the Master Therion or simply to have a better understanding of his books than you do at present, read on!