ABSTRACT
Crowley was a wanderer1 not only in the physical sense, as a traveller and explorer, but also – perhaps above all – in the intellectual and spiritual sense. In him we nd, for example, the inuence of several Oriental mystical and religious traditions, particularly yoga and Buddhism. We nd the inuence of the Decadent movement2 and of positivism, or, more correctly, scientic naturalism3, coming in both cases from his Cambridge days. rough the curriculum of the Golden Dawn, he familiarized himself with various currents or aspects of Western esotericism, including ceremonial magic, alchemy, astrology, Rosicrucianism, Kabbalah, the Tarot. All this contributed to forming a highly complex and perhaps not always consistent whole. We should also consider the fact that, although Crowley was generally interested in politics, this interest remained always subordinate to his magical and metaphysical preoccupations. He was undoubtedly a man who lived in the present and had his own opinions about the social and political situation of his era, but for the most part he could not separate these aspects from the transcendent framework postulated by his world view. Crowley always interpreted his ideas and behaviour in the light of metaphysical considerations. He believed, in essence, that the world was ruled not by material, but by spiritual laws (or we might better say “energies”). In his view, the spiritual (or “astral”) plane was the structure, and the material plane, the superstructure.4 For these reasons, politics came not before but aer metaphysics. If we are to nd consistency in Crowley, we must search for it not in his political ideas, but in his belief that he was a master sent by the gods to bring a new religious message.
