From: Tagi@cup.portal.com (Tagi Mordred Nagashiva)
Newsgroups: alt.magick,soc.culture.german,soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: Crowley's Significance? (Hitler)
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 92 06:42:23 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
  <Bss1xM.MJ8@acsu.buffalo.edu> <17krp7INN4ik@agate.berkeley.edu>

9208.29 e.v.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
The word of Sin is Restriction.


Tom Tedrick writes:

When you take "magick" in Crowley's sense to the extreme you come to a 
Hitler ("triumph of the will" and all that). After all, when you get to
a certain stage in the power game genocide is one of the few remaining 
pastimes still interesting enough to play (testing your will against the
collective strength of a nation or race). So "great men" (in the 
Nietzschean sense, that Crowley so admired) like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, 
Pol Pot, Ghengis Khan, Saddam Hussein, and so on, represent the 
culmination of this type of thinking. 


Response:

Interesting logic.  Crowley's sense:  "Magick is the Science and Art of
causing Change to occur in conformity with Will." 

Recommended reading for those who wish to know more:
_Magick in Theory and Practice_.  Crowley was a bit less politically-
minded than those other fellows. ;>


Tom:

Probably the game some black
magicians are playing today is plotting the extermination of the human 
race (after all, what will it matter to them since they won't be around
much longer? At least, that's their attitude.)


Response:

Note how this sounds.  It is equivalent to the fundamentalist exhortation
of 'Satanists' and the White Supremacist's of 'coloreds'.  Beware.
Black magicians are more than you think.  In Japan, it is WHITE which is
associated with death.


Tom:

You can reduce all Crowley's complicated nonsense with any practical
value to the simpler problem of finding efficient algorithms to achieve
whatever your goal is. Otherwise trying to assimilate all that garbage 
will mislead you (and probably make your head ache :-)


Response:

I think that Magick is also setting about achieving it.  You have confused
Magick with Science, when in fact Magick is just a group of 
disciplines which qualify as both sciences AND arts.
 

Tom:

More conventional practitioners of "magick" (otherwise known as
scientists :-) have brought tremendously destructive forces (such as the
hydrogen bomb) into the world. So you ought to think about what lies at
the end of this amoral road. Ethics and morality do have a useful place
in human life, despite what the black magicians say.


Response:

Scientists do not use bombs.  Warmongers and politicians do.  Scientists
derive the MEANS to cause suffering.  Warmongers CAUSE the suffering.
The person who forges the gun is not responsible for the suicide.  Don't
blame the messenger or the scientist.  Science is simply a means to
come to know.  Artistry creates the weapons which the scientists design.
The warmonger uses the weapon.  The use of the weapon is only the
symptom.  The PROBLEM is a lack of meditation.  Repressed energies
surface regardless of how we may attempt to eschew them.

Most 'magicians' who engage in what you would call 'amoral activities'
consider themselves 'WHITE MAGI'.  Few, like myself, consider ourselves
BLACK and then I mean 'deriving my magick from the unconscious mind.'
Your use of terms is both divisive and ignorant, as I see it.


Tom:

Personally I believe in reincarnation so I hope any black magicians 
plotting our doom and the end of human life as we know it will fail in 
their task ... also don't be fooled into thinking there is some secret 
useful knowledge in "magick" that scientists don't know about 
(scientists are very devious creatures :-) Most people I've met who
consider themselves to be black magicians impress me as being rather 
stupid (And California is full of such nut cases, believe me :-)


Response:

Great, now you enlist 'state rivalry'.  The technique you
are using in this post is the exact tactic used by the 'Great Men'
which you deride and seem to fear:  divide and conquer.  You divide
by separating out (black/white, California/other US states, etc.),
and then you attack.  I hope that your words do not inspire the use
of violence against perceived 'black magicians'.

Most modern scientists know little of Magick.  Most mages who call
themselves 'black magicians' ARE stupid.  Either that, or, like me,
they are prepared for martyrdom.


Tom:

Hitler managed to mislead the German nation into following him
down the road to destruction, so don't be too sure it can't
happen again. If you can fool so many millions of people in
one of the most well educated countries, no nation is safe.
There is no more intelligent people than the Jews, yet
Hitler's brand of evil dealt them a devastating blow.


Response:

It is a mistake to think that Hitler 'misled' the people who
followed him.  Those who followed thought that he was their means toward
a renewal.  As history books tell it, he was fairly honest about
his objectives (horrible as they may seem to us).  He simply struck
a chord within the German people, who were pushed to the extreme by
the poverty and stress of the times.

I doubt that many people in the cross-posted groups appreciate your
comparison either, since Hitler/Germany/WWII is a fairly unique event
in history.  Bringing out such touchy labels and concepts to promote
your cause is rather underhanded.  Just tell us what you think.  You
don't have to resurrect old ghosts (who are sometimes better left in
the past and our hearts) to get ME to understand you.


Tom:

By the way, "blitzkrieg" (the tactics Hitler used to conquer
so many nations) was invented by a disciple of Crowley (see
"Memoirs of an Unconventional Soldier" (J.F.C. Fuller) and
the "plan 1919" material.


Response:

Neat trivia.  Another was that Crowley engaged in the propaganda war
by writing things against England which were used by the Germans.
Lots of people contributed to Germany's success.  Not all of them are
'enemies'.  Love is understanding the actions of others, not condemning
them.  There is ignorance everywhere.  Happiness does not arise from
placing ourself above another.



Invoke me under my stars.   Love is the law, love under will.


I am I!


Frater (I) Nigris (666)