Crowley in his
later years.
Aleister Crowley (12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947), born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast 666, was an English occultist, mystic, ceremonial magician, poet and mountaineer, who was responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. In his role as the founder of the Thelemite philosophy, he came to see himself as the prophet who was entrusted with informing humanity that it was entering the new Aeon of Horus in the early 20th century. To say he was a non conformist or free thinker is an understatement. This post deals with Lam, the extraterrestrial that Crowley claims to have communicated with as early as 1917. Crowley was many things to many people be in the case of Lam he truly beleived, it warrants a closer look.
Throughout Crowley’s years as a magus (means great or teacher), and his
many, many magical experiments he often attempted to contact intelligence's of the non-human variety. Through the uttering of ‘barbarous’ names, incantations and the regurgitation of ancient inscriptions and veiled verses, Crowley called forward all manner of spirits, daemons and invisible masters from which he sought council. One particular ‘entity’, or, at least, icon of the Crowleian pantheon that draws an intense amount of interest is the character known as ‘LAM’. Around 1917, in New York, Crowley drew the image of this ‘praeter-human intelligence’, after performing a ritual now known as the ‘Alamantrah’ working. During this experiment, a discarnate entity urged Crowley to “find the egg”, and it seems, at some point, Crowley experienced contact with this large headed entity we have come to know as LAM.
Lam
What’s interesting about LAM, or, at least, Crowley's drawing of LAM, is the stark resemblance it bares to the popular image of aliens we have come to know since the UFO boom following the Roswell incident in the 40s. Although we now have witnesses claiming to having encountered a whole multitude of different alien visitors, the most popular is still that of the ‘Grey’, a large headed, small featured alien that bares a striking resemblance to the figure Crowley apparently channeled during his Alamantrah Working. Yet Crowley’s image obviously far predates the UFO mania that followed the alleged alien crash and subsequent, apparent, alien visitations that followed.
Crowley's Connection to NASA
Richard C. Hoagland: a look into the occult influence of Aleister Crowley on Jack Parsons, founder of Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) and subsequently on NASA. Ceremony, Ritual and Symbolism of occult significance is the governing force behind the secret space program.
Kenneth Grant & the Typhonian Order
Kenneth Grant
The now famous drawing of LAM eventually found its way into the hands of Kenneth Grant, disputed, and exiled, leader of the OTO following Crowley’s death. Grant, in conflict with the main branch of the OTO, decided to go out on his own, and founded the Typhonian Ordo Templi Orientis, or simply, the Typhonian Order. Keeping this in consideration it seems even more fitting that Crowley would eventually pass on this extraterrestrial image to Grant, as, although the Typhonian Order was committed to continuing the Law of Thelema, it also placed a large emphasis and interest in contact with non-human entities, daemons and praeter-human intelligence's Grant later claimed to have contacted intelligence's that claimed a trans-Plutonian planet existed, named Isis, and formed the New Isis Lodge. He felt thus that the emphasis of ritual working in the New Isis lodge should be focused on contact with the intelligence's therein.
During contact with some dis-incarnate being, Grant claims that he was told the image of LAM is to present a ‘focus of an extraterrestrial’, and was to be used as a tool to contact LAM, or other extraterrestrial entities. “The portrait of (Lam) which is reproduced in The Magical Revival may be used as the visual focus, and can serve as the Yantra of the Cult; the name Lam is the Mantra; and the Tantra is the union with the dikpala by entering the Egg of Spirit represented by the Head. Entry may be affected by projecting consciousness through the eyes…” And so it became the focus as such to use a method devised by Grant to contact these alien intelligence's through the image of LAM Crowley had received. Interestingly, Grant claimed that LAM was a means of communication between Sirius and Andromeda.
Jack Parsons & The Babylon Working
Jack Parsons, rocket scientist. One of the more unassuming characters of Crowley’s legacy, Parsons was friend to infamous Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and was a generally revered character in the OTO on America’s West Coast. Parsons obsessions with occult dealings grew and grew, soon he began to perform more elaborate and difficult rituals in attempt to solidify himself in occult lore.
Jack Parsons
Much to the disapproval of Crowley, in 1946 Parsons began what was dubbed the ‘Babylon Working’, ” which endeavored to … Incarnate a physical aspect of Babylon, the Scarlet Woman of the Book of Revelations (17:3- 6). They believed that Babylon was the herald of the new Age of Horus, and that Revelations was the understandably negative interpretation by those of the dying Age of Osiris.” Crowley despised the “idiocy” of such a ritual, but Parsons and Hubbard continued regardless.
Although it is not completely clear what exactly happened during this 11-day ritual, it seems that some sort of portal was opened to another dimension or part of the universe and Parsons and Hubbard were unable to close this portal, leaving the ritual unfinished. Interestingly, it was just over a year later that the great explosion of UFO sightings began to occur across the states.
Bob Wilson talks to the stars
While never to keen to subscribe to any sort of belief system, or even admit a slight belief in anything at all. The Great Bob, or Robert Anton Wilson to most, had a great interest in the ancient mystery schools and a particular like for the writings of Aleister Crowley. He, unlike many others, saw Crowley for what he was, a great magus and yogi, an undeniable scholar on mystery schools and tradition but also a trickster, joker and all-round scallywag who had found a key to tapping deeply into the subconscious mind.
Bob Wilson
Wilson also shared other interests of Crowley’s; particularly Yoga and both had a penchant for hallucinogens too. Wilson also delved into ritual magic, from time to time, though not treating it with the same seriousness as some followers of Crowley that had come before, the Great Bob even once recounted (while very high) performing a Crowleyan invocation and causing a three headed dog to appear before him, which only disappeared when he began to laugh at its presence in the ‘real’ world before him. Interesting too though, were Wilsons apparent encounters with extraterrestrials, namely extraterrestrials from the dual star system Sirius. In fact, not only did Wilson begin to receive apparent transmissions from the star system, he also unraveled a large facet of hidden information about our binary neighbor. Firstly, Wilson sights Grants research into the hidden meaning of the order Crowley founded known simply as the A.’.A.’.;
“The one place in Crowley’s writings where he gives the meaning of the initials A.’.A.’. is in his magical record (Cefalu, 1921) where it appears as ACTHP APLOC. This is a corrupt Graeco-Coptic form of Argenteum Astrum (the Silver Star) yet it is the true occult key to the nature of the order, which is not expressed by the correct Latin version of the name. Argos derives from arg or arca, the female generative power symbolized by the moon, the womb-shaped argha used in the mysteries, synonymous with the queen of heaven. Arghya (Sanskrit) is the libation cup; Aster Argos is the lunar or ’silver’ star.”
The lunar component is represented by the eye of Isis, and her star is Sirius, the dog-star (Set). The order of the Silver Star is thus the order of the eye of Set, ’the Son behind the Sun,’ represented astronomically by the star of Isis, which is Sothis (Sirius).
Wilson then turns his attention towards Jack Parsons, who’s Babalon Working, although presumably failed, had become an all encompassing obsession. Parsons urged, through tantric sex methods and through sex-yoga that Crowley championed, to channel the essense or spirit of Babalon, saying “Concentrate all force and being in Our Lady Babalon. Light a single light on her altar, saying Flame is our Lady; flame is her hair. I am flame.” Etc. Wilson notes that Parsons was eventually killed in a freak explosion in his home lab involving mercury fulminate. Babalon, in Crowley’s tarot, is the Star, or Sirius.
But we’re only beginning to go down the rabbit hole here. One day Wilson came upon a book written by JG Bennett on the teachings of Zoroastrian philosopher Gurdjieff. Wilson, opening the book, came upon a passage that set alarm bells ringing once more, it read;
“After Gurdjieff died I was asked by some of the old pupils to write a commentary on Beelzebub (‘s tales to his grandson). When I had written a few chapters and sent them around for comment, almost all agreed that it would be a mistake to publish them. If Gurdjieff had intended his meaning to be readily accessible to every reader, he would have written the book differently. He himself used to listen to chapters read aloud and if he found the key passages taken too easily — and therefore almost inevitably too superficially — he would rewrite them in order, as he put it, to “bury the dog deeper.” When people corrected him and said he surely meant “bury the bone deeper,” he would turn on them and say it was not “bones” but the “dog” that you have to find. The dog is Sirius the dog star, which stands for the spirit of wisdom in the Zoroastrian tradition.”
A coincidence, perhaps, but when you consider that Gurdjieff’s famous text, Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson, is concerned with an extraterrestrial higher intelligence race who intervene on Earth’s actions to accelerate evolution, the synchronicities seem hard to ignore. In another book on Gurdjieff, Bennett also claims that the former was initiated into a mystery school that began in Babylon around 4500 B.C., coincidentally the same time the mysteries in which Crowley practiced in were roughly dated to.
To read the rest of the story on Aleister Crowley