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    The Book of LIES
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    The Book of LIES
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    The Book of LIES
    Ebook172 pages1 hour

    The Book of LIES

    By Aleister Crowley

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    About this ebook

    Aleister Crowley was a noted and controversial occultist, ceremonial magician and poet. He has been called "the wickedest man in the world" or "The Great Beast 666 " or "Frater Perdurabo" but he remained a highly influential figure over Western esotericism and the counterculture. This book contains features aphorisms and paradoxes that invoke the symbolism of Freemasonry and other traditions (Qabalah, Satanism...). This is a valuable book to anyone interested in occult studies. 

    Excerpt: “…None the less, I could point to some solid achievement on the large scale, although it is composed of more or less disconnected elements. I refer to The Book of Lies. In this there are 93 chapters: we count as a chapter the two pages filled respectively with a note of interrogation and a mark of exclamation. The other chapters contain sometimes a single word, more frequently from a half-dozen to twenty phrases, occasionally anything up to a dozen to twenty paragraphs. The subject of each chapter is determined more or less definitely by the Qabalistic import of its number. Thus Chapter 25 gives a revised ritual of the Pentagram; 72 is a rondel with the refrain 'Shemhamphorash', the Divine name of 72 letters; 77 Laylah, whose name adds to that number; and 80, the number of the letter Pé, referred to Mars,a panegyric upon War. Sometimes the text is serious and straightforward, sometimes its obscure oracles demand deep knowledge of the Qabalah for interpretation, others contain obscure allusions, play upon words, secrets expressed in cryptogram, double or triple meanings which must be combined in order to appreciate the full flavour; others again are subtly ironical or cynical. At first sight the book is a jumble of nonsense intended to insult the reader. It requires infinite study, sympathy, intuition and initiation. Given these I do not hesitate to claim that in none other of my writings have I given so profound and comprehensive an exposition of my philosophy on every plane...”
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlicia Editions
    Release dateNov 14, 2019
    ISBN9782357283596
    Author

    Aleister Crowley

    Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) was an English poet, painter, occultist, magician, and mountaineer. Born into wealth, he rejected his family’s Christian beliefs and developed a passion for Western esotericism. At Trinity College, Cambridge, Crowley gained a reputation as a poet whose work appeared in such publications as The Granta and Cambridge Magazine. An avid mountaineer, he made the first unguided ascent of the Mönch in the Swiss Alps. Around this time, he first began identifying as bisexual and carried on relationships with prostitutes, which led to his contracting syphilis. In 1897, he briefly dated fellow student Herbert Charles Pollitt, whose unease with Crowley’s esotericism would lead to their breakup. The following year, Crowley joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret occult society to which many of the era’s leading artists belonged, including Bram Stoker, W. B. Yeats, Arthur Machen, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Between 1900 and 1903, he traveled to Mexico, India, Japan, and Paris. In these formative years, Crowley studied Hinduism, wrote the poems that would form The Sword of Song (1904), attempted to climb K2, and became acquainted with such artists as Auguste Rodin and W. Somerset Maugham. A 1904 trip to Egypt inspired him to develop Thelema, a philosophical and religious group he would lead for the remainder of his life. He would claim that The Book of the Law (1909), his most important literary work and the central sacred text of Thelema, was delivered to him personally in Cairo by the entity Aiwass. During the First World War, Crowley allegedly worked as a double agent for the British intelligence services while pretending to support the pro-German movement in the United States. The last decades of his life were spent largely in exile due to persecution in the press and by the states of Britain and Italy for his bohemian lifestyle and open bisexuality.

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    Reviews for The Book of LIES

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    • 5/5
      I love this book. Meant to be taken in small doses, it's the best and worst of Uncle Al, with jokes, puns and outright snarkiness on so many levels. Many of it is inside jokes, so if you don't have a background in Western Hermetic Qabalah and/or general Crowley, it wont be as much fun. I'd always recommend his Autohagiography first
    • 4/5
      Probably the most approachable of Crowley's magickal writings. Much less intimidating then Liber AL and other highly technical works by Crowley. An amusing tome of Qabalistic 'verse' (in the loosest sense, as a chapter can be a single word or punctuation), that can't help but to remind one of the Tao Te Ching. However, Lao Tzu was never this funny or cryptic. An enjoyable work for the layman as well as the student, and I err more towards the former.
    • 4/5
      This Qabalistic book has been described as a "little master work", and in occult literature, I would say that is accurate. The title, "Book of Lies", refers to the idea that nothing True can be spoken or written, but only experienced. Nevertheless, human communication, vital to aiding our Understanding, must be used to give a hint or suggestion of Truth. And so Crowley writes 91 brief chapters of what he calls "relatively true" falsifications; in other words, Universally Untrue things that nevertheless have truth for humans in their microcosmic lives.Sometimes amusing, sometimes disturbing, sometimes cryptic (even to Crowley who notes "the final Mystery is always insoluble"), the verses are accompanied by Crowley's commentaries, providing a concise and artful introduction to and clarification of his views on life and Qabalah.