Drunk History: Crowley Like 4 Or Something: Crowley Harder

You know how I said there was a lot of this guy? There is A LOT OF THIS GUY. Like, I’m basically just going from what I’ve heard referenced in other occult stuff and Wiki, and I’ve done four blog posts already and Wiki has yet to get to Late Life, FFS. Crowley was clearly one of those dudes who couldn’t get the morning paper without starting a fire and writing a lengthy poetry cycle about it.

Sort of the Victorian occult version of people in the news right now, no? Except thank God our current attention leech doesn’t write poetry, like, that is the one thing that would make the situation worse.

Speaking of which: the VP debate is tonight, which makes it a great night for the “Drunk” part of this title. Tonight’s refreshing and wholesome beverage is St. James Brand Strawberry Wine, which my mom bought for me because she’s awesome and accepts that she’s raised an alcoholic hummingbird.

So when we last left Crowley, he was being an “occult bodyguard” to the Earl of Tankerville (actual name that I could not get away with using in a book) who was “afraid of witchcraft,” which is Weird Brit Occultist for “has sucked half of South America up his nostrils and is commensurately twitchy.” In his occultly-bodyguarding capacity, Crowley took Tankerville to Morocco and France.

Note to any cocaine-addled British nobility reading this: I would be a fucking fantastic occult bodyguard. I could protect you from all the witchcraft. DM me.

Aside from that, Crowley continued following his own drug-and-S&M star, punctuated by writing–horror stories, poetry, and pieces for, of all outlets, Vanity Fair. I am not even kidding. One of those last was titled “On the Management of Blondes,” and I say, from the depths of my heart: ew.

Founding his own magical order was pretty inevitable. One, as I mentioned, that was more or less mandatory for Victorians of a certain class–like a mystical version of foxhunting, or gout. Two, of course Crowley would go total Oh Yeah, You Think You Can Kick Me Out Mathers? about the whole Golden Dawn thing, because: Daddy Issues, possibly in both the paternal and the sexual sense. The fact that Alex named his order the “Silver Star” does nothing to dispel this belief.

Naturally, he also translated it into Latin–hey, Latin is sexy, so say Giles and Fenris, I have no beef with that–and then he abbreviated it as “A: A” but with a little three-lobed burning eye I mean three-ball-pyramid between each letter. Why, you might ask? Well, Llewelyn, everyone’s favorite source of Extremely Fucking Basic Wicca, says that the pyramid means “something further is hidden,” and also that the A balls A balls “possesses the secret Masonic “Lost Word.”

A completely unscientific prediction, by me, says that 100 out of 100 Masons think this is complete bullshit.

Noooot that the Aballs (and it really is sad that it was so goddamn silly, because “Silver Star” is a pretty name and Argentum Astrum is cool until people start making ass jokes, WHICH THEY WILL, but hey) weren’t influenced by the Masons. If I haven’t said it before, I’ll say it now: occultism, especially 18th and 19th century Western occultism, is more incestuous than a V.C. Andrews dynasty. The Golden Dawn got a lot of the rank-and-ceremony stuff from Masonic rites (which a lot of adult men in the UK knew, because Freemasonry and the Grange and so on were both socialization and social support networks in the days before insurance or social security or the Internet) and the Three Lobed Burning Star ripped off the GD like whoa.

Oh, excuse me, “expanded on” the GD. The lowest six ranks of Astrum are the Order of the Golden Dawn, Because Take That, Samuel McGregor, That’s Motherfucking Why. I will give Crowley credit for an impressive amount of pettiness here, and I speak as someone who initially named her fictional world’s evil god after a girl she hated in middle school. (I changed it a little later, not so much out of forgiveness or whatever but because it was one of those Evil God Apostrophe Names that went out of style in 1992.) Honestly, this level of intricate and detailed yet deniable spite makes me like the guy a little more.

(I would bet money that, had it been plausible, Bang Mathers’s Mom would have been one of the initiatory rites. I mean.)

After the Golden Dawn comes the Rosy Cross, because why the fuck not just go on ripping off names? We’re fucking Victorians, it’s what we do. And theeeeen the top three ranks are the Order of the Silver Star, which used to be/hopefully is not these days sometimes abbreviated as the “Order of the S balls S balls”: balls or not, those are some YIKES ASSOCIATIONS.

The highest rank, Ipissimus, is also the Double Secret Highest Rank, because nobody who gets there is actually supposed to let on. Crowley…at least strongly implied that he’d gotten there, because Crowley.

There is also an entire controversy about the possible translations of the name. Nobody ever said 19th century occultists didn’t know how to cut loose.

One of the tenets of the order is that members can’t accept payment for initiation or other stuff. People who are still around today may actually abide by the spirit of that, but Crowley 100% accepted “donations,” which were “not payment” in the sense that the office softball game is “not work.”

Just to add fun to 1970s conspiracy-theory books and people who actually believe in conspiracy theories, Crowley then called the “Official Organ” (snrrrrk) of the Silver Balls, a magazine called The Equinox, “The Review of Scientific Illuminism”.

Do I know what that means? No. Does anyone? Did anyone, including Crowley? Probably fucking not.

Now I’m going to go watch the debates and scream drunkenly at Mike Pence.