Max > Max's Quotes

“Balance every thought with its opposition. Because the marriage of them is the destruction of illusion.”
― Aleister Crowley

“The Way of Mastery is to break all the rules—but you have to know them perfectly before you can do this; otherwise you are not in a position to transcend them.”
― Aleister Crowley, Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law

“It is a terrible error to let any natural impulse, physical or mental, stagnate. Crush it out, if you will, and be done with it; or fulfil it, and get it out of the system; but do not allow it to remain there and putrefy. The suppression of the normal sex instinct, for example, is responsible for a thousand ills. In Puritan countries one inevitably finds a morbid preoccupation with sex coupled with every form of perversion and degeneracy. ”
― Aleister Crowley, Moonchild

“Ordinary morality is only for ordinary people.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography

“I've often thought that there isn't any "I" at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think we are ourselves, we are simply the victims of a delusion.”
― Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend

“Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with the Will.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law

“Every one interprets everything in terms of his own experience. If you say anything which does not touch a precisely similar spot in another man's brain, he either misunderstands you, or doesn't understand you at all.”
― Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend

“The joy of life consists in the exercise of one's energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography

“Having to talk destroys the symphony of silence.”
― Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend

“I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of Lies

“May the New Year bring you courage to break your resolutions early! My own plan is to swear off every kind of virtue, so that I triumph even when I fall!”
― Aleister Crowley, Moonchild

“One would go mad if one took the Bible seriously; but to take it seriously one must be already mad.”
― Aleister Crowley, Magick: Liber ABA: Book 4

“I'm a poet, and I like my lies the way my mother used to make them.”
― Aleister Crowley, Moonchild

“Love is the law, love under will.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law

“It is necessary, in this world, to be made of harder stuff than one's environment.”
― Aleister Crowley, Moonchild

“For I am divided for love's sake, for the chance of union.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law

“I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff.”
― Aleister Crowley

“Dreams are imperfections of sleep; even so is consciousness the imperfection of waking.
Dreams are impurities in the circulation of the blood; even so it's consciousness a disorder of life.
Dreams are without proportion, without good sense, without truth; so also is consciousness.
Awake from dream, the truth is known: awake from waking. The truth is: The Unknown”
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of Lies

“...in the absence of will power, the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography

“So sweet is this song that no one could resist it. For in it is all the passionate ache for the moonlight, and the great hunger of the sea, and the terror of desolate places,—all things that lure men to the unattainable.

Omari tessala marax,
tessala dodi phornepax
amri radara poliax
armana piliu
amri radara piliu son;
mari narya barbiton
madara anaphax sarpedon
andala hriliu

Translation:
I am the harlot that shaketh Death.
This shaking giveth the Peace of Satiate Lust.
Immortality jetteth from my skull,
And music from my vulva.
Immortality jetteth from my vulva also,
For my Whoredom is a sweet scent like a seven-stringed instrument,
Played unto God the Invisible, the all-ruler,
That goeth along giving the shrill scream of orgasm.

Every man that hath seen me forgetteth me never, and I appear oftentimes in the coals of the fire, and upon the smooth white skin of woman, and in the constancy of the waterfall, and in the emptiness of deserts and marshes, and upon great cliffs that look seaward; and in many strange places, where men seek me not. And many thousand times he beholdeth me not. And at last I smite myself into him as a vision smiteth into a stone, and whom I call must follow.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Vision and the Voice: With Commentary and Other Papers

“Since all things are God, in all things thou seest just so much of God as thy capacity affordeth thee.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Vision and the Voice: With Commentary and Other Papers

“First of all, you must never speak of anything by its name -- in that country. So, if you see a tree on a mountain, it will be better to say 'Look at the green on the high'; for that's how they talk -- in that country. And whatever you do, you must find a false reason for doing it -- in that country. If you rob a man, you must say it is to help and protect him: that's the ethics -- of that country. And everything of value has no value at all -- in that country. You must be perfectly commonplace if you want to be a genius -- in that country. And everything you like you must pretend not to like; and anything that is there you must pretend is not there -- in that country. And you must always say that you are sacrificing yourself in the cause of religion, and morality, and humanity, and liberty, and progress, when you want to cheat your neighbour -- in that country."

Good heavens!" cried Iliel, 'are we going to England?”
― Aleister Crowley, Moonchild

“The Universe is the Practical Joke of the General
at the expense of the Particular, quoth FRATER
PERDURABO, and laughed.
But those disciples nearest to him wept, seeing the
Universal Sorrow.
Those next to them laughed, seeing the Universal Joke.
Below these certain disciples wept,
Then certain laughed.
Others next wept.
Others next laughed.
Next others wept.
Next others laughed.
Last came those that wept because they could not
see the Joke, and those that laughed lest they
should be thought not to see the Joke, and thought
it safe to act like FRATER PERDURABO.
But though FRATER PERDURABO laughed
openly, He also at the same time wept secretly;
and in Himself He neither laughed nor wept.
Nor did He mean what He said.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of Lies

“But it so happens that everything on this planet is, ultimately, irrational; there is not, and cannot be, any reason for the causal connexion of things, if only because our use of the word "reason" already implies the idea of causal connexion. But, even if we avoid this fundamental difficulty, Hume said that causal connexion was not merely unprovable, but unthinkable; and, in shallower waters still, one cannot assign a true reason why water should flow down hill, or sugar taste sweet in the mouth. Attempts to explain these simple matters always progress into a learned lucidity, and on further analysis retire to a remote stronghold where every thing is irrational and unthinkable.

If you cut off a man's head, he dies. Why? Because it kills him. That is really the whole answer. Learned excursions into anatomy and physiology only beg the question; it does not explain why the heart is necessary to life to say that it is a vital organ. Yet that is exactly what is done, the trick that is played on every inquiring mind. Why cannot I see in the dark? Because light is necessary to sight. No confusion of that issue by talk of rods and cones, and optical centres, and foci, and lenses, and vibrations is very different to Edwin Arthwait's treatment of the long-suffering English language.

Knowledge is really confined to experience. The laws of Nature are, as Kant said, the laws of our minds, and, as Huxley said, the generalization of observed facts.

It is, therefore, no argument against ceremonial magic to say that it is "absurd" to try to raise a thunderstorm by beating a drum; it is not even fair to say that you have tried the experiment, found it would not work, and so perceived it to be "impossible." You might as well claim that, as you had taken paint and canvas, and not produced a Rembrandt, it was evident that the pictures attributed to his painting were really produced in quite a different way.

You do not see why the skull of a parricide should help you to raise a dead man, as you do not see why the mercury in a thermometer should rise and fall, though you elaborately pretend that you do; and you could not raise a dead man by the aid of the skull of a parricide, just as you could not play the violin like Kreisler; though in the latter case you might modestly add that you thought you could learn.

This is not the special pleading of a professed magician; it boils down to the advice not to judge subjects of which you are perfectly ignorant, and is to be found, stated in clearer and lovelier language, in the Essays of Thomas Henry Huxley. ”
― Aleister Crowley

“For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law

“Your friends will notice at once that glib vacuities fail to impress, and hate you, and tell lies about you. It's worth it.”
― Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears

“A man friends are more capable of working him harm than strangers; and his greatest
danger lies in his own habits.”
― Aleister Crowley

“The few love affairs which had come my way had been rather silly and sordid. They had not revealed the possibilities of love; in fact I had thought it a somewhat overrated pleasure, a brief and brutal blindness with boredom and disgust hard on its heels.”
― Aleister Crowley, Diary of a Drug Fiend

“30. If Will stops and cries Why, invoking Because, then Will stops & does nought.
31. If Power asks why, then is Power weakness.”
― Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law