Reviews for Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley

The average rating for Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-11-22 00:00:00 Mark Marzigliano Well, that was certainly a book which I read. Massive bio of Crowley which deserves the epithet 'exhaustive/ing' if only for the potted biographies of literally everyone he ever met, usually including their parents' names, educational history, career etc. This for, eg, someone he had sex with twice. He had sex with a lot of people. This is a large part of what makes this book so unreasonably gigantic. Thank heaven for ereaders, my wrists can't take much more stress (the latter probably something Crowley said a lot). So. It's an interesting story about a fundamentally horrible human being. Crowley was awarded the newspaper title of The Wickedest Man in the World in large part because of his one-man sexual revolution thing, plus his deliberate efforts to shock people which he then claimed he wasn't doing. (Calls himself 'The Great Beast 666' and then claims in court that the term should be taken to mean 'Little Sunshine'. Oh, sod off you child.) He comes across as, not so much a Great Beast, more a massive tool. Petulant, dishonest, whiny, self-centred to sociopathy. There is a point where you have to look at how many of a man's long-term lovers become alcoholics and think: ooh hey, common denominator. The author attempts to present Crowley non judgementally. This includes taking a lot of his stuff at face value: the visions and automatic writing of entire books (I wish), the workings, the achievement of mysterious degrees of magical status, the 'sex magick rituals' (mm hmm), the claim that he invented the V for Victory sign in WW2 for Churchill as a mass magical working (no really). We never confront the question of whether Crowley actually believed the stuff he peddled--he may have done, he certainly blew a fortune and a lot of effort on it. Which is a pretty massive lacuna in the book tbh. Author also accepts his wholesale pilfering from a variety of mostly Eastern religions as 'syncretic'. I'm hearing cultural appropriation, but whatevs. Why read about this ghastly man? Well, a) I'm doing it for work, what's your excuse. b) he was actually someone of real potential and talent. He was an incredibly talented mountain climber, the first to lead an expedition up K2. He was, at points, a *really* good poet. I read his early and eye-wateringly obscene collection White Stains (nice title) and amid the odes to bestiality and necrophilia and Lovecraftian ramblings are some strikingly, stop-in-your-tracks good love poems and a really impressive mastery of form. The man could use words. Also c) it's pretty interesting to see the counterculture at work long before the 60s, and he certainly met a lot of other extremely out-there people (if Gerald Hamilton and Betty May are names that ring a bell). A comprehensive work on the facts; I doubt the world will need another bio of Aleister Crowley, and I mean that in every possible sense.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-12-15 00:00:00 Dorian Khouri "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." - Aleister Crowley Aleister Crowley, born in 1875, was the scion of a wealthy British family who made money in breweries, railroads and chemicals with international concerns. They were devout Christians from Quakers in the 1700's to Plymouth Brethren in the 1800's, strict sects of evangelical Protestants. Taught at various religious schools he was initially a sickly boy. In teenage years he began to question the faith of his family. He developed unusual talents for chess, poetry and mountain climbing, first scaling the chalk cliffs of Sussex and later solo summits in Scotland and the Alps. A fellow climber and chemist introduced him to alchemy and the occult in the years leading up to college. On entering Trinity College Cambridge in 1895 he received two million from his father's estate and was free of family control. A first act of independence was refusal to attend Anglical church services. After an affair with a fellow student he became bisexual. He began to publish poetry in limited edition runs. Successful in studies he skipped final exams, following Byron, Shelley and Tennyson in not graduating. In the late 19th century there was great interest in the occult. Freemasons, Theosophists and Rosicrucians were wide spread and Crowley turned away from a career in favor of spiritual pursuits. W. B. Yeats was a member of the magical order that Crowley was to join. Under elder practitioners Crowley called forth spirits with a wand inside a protecting circle. Astral projection was easy as morphine and opium enhanced paranormal powers. Magical, poetic and romantic rivalries with Yeats led to his ouster from the order. Clubs catered to dilettantes but real magic was the solitary study of ancient languages and arcane literature. In 1900 Crowley sailed to Mexico, climbed extinct volcanoes, and practiced invisibility. He went to China and India, studied Buddhism in Burma, and attempted K2 in Kashmir. In Paris he became a character in two Somerset Maugham novels. In Cairo an ancient diety dictated 'The Law' spelling an end to earlier faiths. In 1905 Crowley was blamed for a deadly mountaineering accident. He lost a first child to typhoid and wife to alcohol. Despairing of climbing and poetry he turned to full time magic. Earlier decades were tales of adventure but later years are accounts of mystic hocus pocus. Wandering the Sahara desert he had fantastic visions and invented new religions. He published journals, initiated secret societies and hosted rituals where peyote was passed. In the years before WWI he was banned from Cambridge on claims of pederasty and vilified by the press. From sex magic to sheep sacrifice in Loch Ness it's hard to tell if he really believed or merely perpetrated a hoax. As the Great War began Crowley moved to America. After a short stint as a freelance spy in New York he traveled west spreading occultism. He envisioned himself as 'The Great Beast 666' after a lineage from Laotze to Muhammad, based on the Kabbala and Revelations. He painted grotesque images and premiered art shows. Fortunes exhausted he returned to London. Criticized for working on German propaganda he relocated to Sicily in 1920 and founded a cultist abbey. Stocking his villa with heroin and cocaine he practiced an eclectic mix of I Ching, tarot, numerology and astrology. Two more children died as open marriages and adultery were given free reign. Mussolini heard of his deeds and Crowley was deported. He moved to Paris and Berlin, and then London for most of the 1930's, living mainly off libel suits and contributions from followers. His offers of WWII espionage services were not surprisingly declined. During the German blitz advancing age and declining health took their toll as he tried to remain relevant. Crowley died in 1947 three months after the British empire in India expired, a prosaic end to a poetic life. Parts of this book are a 'Who's Who' of everyone Crowley met, with birth and death dates included. Forests are felled as rituals are recounted. I have the expanded edition; the shorter version may have sufficed. Crowley struggled with Victorian religious and sexual mores and sought outrageous ways to trangress boundaries. He patterned himself after William Blake and Richard Francis Burton with less stellar results. He was perhaps more of a writer than a religious leader although his occult orders still survive today. His life may reflect the idle pursuits of wealth but a more critical view might suggest otherwise. If believed, his visions and voices of angels and demons could suggest some form of psychosis. In any case little analysis is offered and Crowley's claims are mostly recounted verbatim. The approach is puzzling, and maybe more so when you know the background of the author. Richard Kaczynski holds a PhD in social psychology and is sometimes a professor at Wayne State University and Yale. He is also member of Thelema, Crowley's religion, and OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis), a group Crowley was a leader of. Although an occultist himself this book doesn't explain much about magic. It is well researched although far too painstaking in it's level of detail. Beyond these faults it gives a clear sense of Crowley's personality and life. It is also a unique portrait of upper class Europe from the late Victorian through WWII eras. It's tempting to see this as a work of fantasy but it is a true account of a modern people who lived in a make believe world.