Aleister Crowley Quotes

The Quest of the Holy Grail, the Search for the Stone of the Philosophers - by whatever name we choose to call the Great Work - is therefore endless. Success only opens up new avenues of brilliant possibility. Yea, verily, and Amen! the task is tireless and its joys without bounds; for the whole Universe, and all that in it is, what is it but the infinite playground of the Crowned and Conquering Child, of the insatiable, the innocent, the ever-rejoicing Heir of Space and Eternity, whose name is MAN?

There is a single main definition of the object of all magical Ritual. It is the uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm. The Supreme and Complete Ritual is therefore the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; or, in the language of Mysticism, Union with God.

I did not hate God or Christ, but merely the God and Christ of the people whom I hated.

Inevitably anyone with an independent mind must become 'one who resists or opposes authority or established conventions': a rebel. If enough people come to agree with, and follow, the Rebel, we now have a Devil. Until, of course, still more people agree. And then, finally, we have --- Greatness.

If one were to take the bible seriously one would go mad. But to take the bible seriously, one must be already mad.

Magick is the Art of Life itself.

Sex is the sacred song of the soul; Sex is the sanctuary of Self.

Your kiss is bitter with cocaine.

The average man cannot believe that an artist may be as serious and highminded an observer of life as the professed man of science.

There is no grace: there is no guilt: This is the Law: DO WHAT THOU WILT!

I cling unto the burning Æthyr like Lucifer that fell through the Abyss, and by the fury of his flight kindled the air. And I am Belial, for having seen the Rose upon thy breast, I have denied God. And I am Satan! I am Satan! I am cast out upon a burning crag! And the sea boils about the desolation thereof. And already the vultures gather, and feast upon my flesh.

There are no "standards of Right". Ethics is balderdash. Each Star must go on its own orbit. To hell with "moral principle"; there is no such thing.

I am the blue-lidded daughter of Sunset; I am the naked brilliance of the voluptuous night-sky.

The Gods are but names for the forces of Nature themselves.

By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.

My observation of the Universe convinces me that there are beings of intelligence and power of a far higher quality than anything we can conceive of as human; that they are not necessarily based on the cerebral and nervous structures that we know, and that the one and only chance for mankind to advance as a whole is for individuals to make contact with such beings.

Love is the only principle which makes life tolerable.

Intolerance is evidence of impotence.

The essence of independence has been to think and act according to standards from within, not without.

I hardly ever talk- words seem such a waste, and they are none of them true. No one has yet invented a language from my point of view.

There is a splendour in my name hidden and glorious, as the sun of midnight is ever the son.

To knot a sentence up properly, it has to be thought out carefully, and revised. New phrases have to be put in; sudden changes of subject must be introducted; verbs must be shifted to unsuspected localities; short words must be excised with ruthless hand; archaisms must be sprinkled like sugar-plums upon the concoction; the fatal human tendency to say things straightforwardly must be detected and defeated by adroit reversals; and, if a glimmer of meaning yet remain under close scrutiny, it must be removed by replacing all the principal verbs by paraphrases in some dead language.

But neither Europe nor Africa can show any such desolation as America. The proudest, stubbornest, bitterest peasant of deserted Spain, the most primitive and superstitious Arab of the remotest oases, are a little more than kin and never less than kind at their worst; whereas in the United States one is almost always conscious of an instinctive lack of sympathy and understanding with even the most charming and cultured people.

It sometimes strikes me that the whole of science is a piece of impudence; that nature can afford to ignore our impertinent interference. If our monkey mischief should ever reach the point of blowing up the earth by decomposing an atom, and even annihilated the sun himself, I cannot really suppose that the universe would turn a hair.

Invoke often! Inflame thyself with prayer!

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.

All phenomena of which we are aware take place in our own minds, and therefore the only thing we have to look at is the mind; which is a more constant quantity over all the species of humanity than is generally supposed.

For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.

Their false compassion is called compassion and their false understanding is called understanding, for this is their most potent spell.

It would be unwise to condemn as irrational the practice of devouring the heart and liver of an adversary while yet warm. For the highest spiritual working one must choose that victim which contains the greatest and purest force; a male child of perfect innocence and high intelligence is the most satisfactory.

A single ego is an absurdly narrow vantage point from which to view the world.

The absolute rule of the state shall be a function of the absolute liberty of each individual will.

Men and women are not free to love decently until they have analyzed themselves completely and swept away every mystery from sex; and this means the acquisition of a profound philosophical theory based on wide reading of anthropology and enlightened practice.

The nails from a suicide's coffin, and the skull of the parricide, were of course no trouble; for Vesquit never traveled without these household requisites.

When one walks, one is brought into touch first of all with the essential relations between one's physical powers and the character of the country; one is compelled to see it as its natives do. Then every man one meets is an individual.

Happiness lies within one's self, and the way to dig it out is cocaine.

Magic is real. And reality... it is magical.

To the eyes of a god, mankind must appear as a species of bacteria which multiply and become progressively virulent whenever they find themselves in a congenial culture, and whose activity diminishes until they disappear completely as soon as proper measures are taken to sterilize them.

This Universe is a wild revel of atoms, men, and stars, each one a Soul of Light and Mirth, horsed on Eternity.

The supreme satisfaction is to be able to despise one's neighbor and this fact goes far to account for religious intolerance. It is evidently consoling to reflect that the people next door are headed for hell.

A burnt child dreads the fire.

In the absence of willpower the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.

If one had to worry about one's actions in respect of other people's ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or married to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon.

In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them.

Genuine recollections almost invariably explain oneself to oneself. Suppose, for example, that you feel an instinctive aversion to some particular kind of wine. Try as you will, you can find no reason for it. Suppose when you explore a previous incarnation, you remember you died by a poisoned administered in a wine of that kind, your aversion is explained by the proverb: 'A burnt child dreads the fire.'

Don't talk for five minutes, there's a good chap! I've a strange feeling come over me--almost as if I were going to think!

To me a book is a message from the gods to mankind; or, if not, should never be published at all. A message from the gods should be delivered at once. It is damnably blasphemous to talk about the autumn season and so on. How dare the author or publisher demand a price for doing his duty, the highest and most honorable to which a man can be called?

Anything which throws light upon the Universe, anything which reveals us to ourselves, should be welcome in this world of riddles.