In January 2016, I emailed the author Peter Levenda (who has written and spoken about Crowley on various occasions) to ask if he was aware of any evidence of Crowley’s involvement in child sexual abuse. Levenda’s response was superficially thoughtful but at the same time, I thought, rather dismissive. I reprint it below with Peter’s permission:
I don’t have any solid evidence on AC’s involvement in child sex rituals. He probably drew the line there. It’s a problematic issue, because sexual attraction was not AC’s primary motivation for sex where magick was concerned. In other words, I don’t believe AC was a pedophile (just based on my own reading of his work as well as all those really massive biographies that have come out lately) but just because he wasn’t attracted to children did not mean he would avoid sex with children if he believed it served a magickal purpose. But it would have amounted to rape, and AC was a great believer in everyone following their true will so it is doubtful he would have practiced sex rituals with children who would not have been able to consent. He had numerous sexual partners among prostitutes, for instance, which was more his metier.
Remember also that he had children, and that one famously perished during the period when he was on the trek in Yunnan Province (often wrongly characterized as a “trek across China”; it was hardly that). That death affected him greatly. He was never accused of pedophilia by anyone as far as I know, except for the tabloid press perhaps, and he was accused of everything else including bestiality if I recall. We know he was aggressively bisexual, for whatever that’s worth. I don’t believe that the child who died at Cefalu, for instance, perished as a result of sex rituals or any ritual, really.
But as I say I have no solid evidence in any direction on this. I know members of the OTO (and have known many since the 1970s) and one could not accuse any of them of pedophilia or using children for sexual rituals. If there was even the whiff of that, you can be sure I would have followed it up.
In response to this, I sent him the infamous passage from the 1920 journal. He did not respond. Time passed and recently (April) I began working the material featured at this thread into an essay which I thought I’d post at disinfo. It snowballed into a 40,000 word and counting exploration which now looks most suited to be the second part of a book, with “Occult Yorkshire” as the first. I was struck by the recurring sense I got that no one, most of all Crowley scholars, wanted to hear about child sexual abuse, so I decided to try and get some of them to go on record for the book/piece.
Among various emails, I sent this one to Levenda on Wednesday 29 June:
I am working on a follow-up to “Occult Yorkshire” which looks at the overlap between Crowley’s beliefs and activities with larger social engineering goals that include the deliberate sexual traumatization of children in a ritualistic fashion. One of the things I am wrestling with around this is how there seems to be so much evidence that Crowley both advocated this partiuclar type of transgression and was involved in it, and yet, at the same time, so little serious, never mind scholarly, examination of the evidence. Of course, what constitutes evidence and what merely circumstance, rumor, bluster, and the like is quite a subjective matter. Nonetheless, I feel confident in saying that the evidence I have gathered would give pause to all but the staunchest of Crowley advocates.
I’d like to include the thoughts and responses of some of the AC researchers out there in the work, even if all they have to say is “no comment” (or even if they don’t take the time to say that). The reason I want to include it is that, just as every cover-up proves a crime, I find the sort of stonewalling that occurs when it comes to questioning a dominant narrative around a public figure or event to be very much part of the evidence.
This is a genuinely fascinating area, and AC is very much the center of what I think is not merely a huge industry but a massive disinformation apparatus around modern occultism, and may even be synonymous with it. (The overlap between intelligence and the occult is so deep & wide that it’s questionable as to whether “overlap” is even the word for it.)
Below is your last response to me, after which I sent you some material from AC’s own journal, from the Abbey of Thelema period, but received no response. Since then I have found quite a bit more evidence suggesting that this passage was no fevered drug vision, as I presume must be the explanation given for it by AC’s apologists (tho actually I have never heard anyone address it at all; it is entirely absent from Kaczyinsky’s bio). Nor is it anomalous to AC’s activities or exhortations. Liber Al itself proscribes [sic; should read prescribes] the sacrifice of children!
I am writing to ask if I can quote the below response, and if you have anything to add; and/or: are you interested in seeing some of the arguments I have formulated and responding to those?
Levenda responded:
Well, as I wrote previously, I don’t see a smoking gun where AC’s alleged child abuse is concerned. About all we have are the statements of visitors to Cefalu that children were allowed to run free and observe sexual acts being performed by the adults. That would constitute sexual abuse in some countries (although in 1960s America it took place on some communes, and there were some famous references to the sexuality of children in some Wiccan publications of the 1970s, I think “The Witches Bible” was one of these, but I could be mistaken, it was a long time ago!), but if you are seeking evidence that AC himself sexually abused children and are not finding it I don’t think it’s because you are being stonewalled. Crowley died in 1947, so there are very few people left alive today who would have direct knowledge of anything like that. Thus, any evidence to support this theory would be, of necessity, circumstantial. Photographs and film footage would not exist (I am relatively sure; there are not many photos of AC or his sexual partners as it is); written documentation probably doesn’t exist, either, unless it has been suppressed by whoever owns such a document.
The evidence you provided in your previous email was pretty familiar to me as well as to other researchers, but taken in context constitute a pretty thin case for sexual abuse. That he abused women of all backgrounds seems fairly obvious (protestations by some Thelemites to the contrary notwithstanding!), as well as the abuse of some men. His lifestyle was dangerous to children: a lot of arduous foreign travel at a time when it was considerably more problematic than it is today; drug consumption; alcoholism; excessive self-absorption, etc. If AC was involved in “deliberate sexual traumatization of children” in whatever fashion, what was the goal? And have any of his children admitted to this? Crowley’s occult system demanded that he keep records of rituals, their purpose as well as their outcome, and there is nothing on this even though there is considerable detail on his sexual rituals.
The passage from the diary you mentioned also has to be taken in context. AC wrote a lot of prose like that. His mission was to shock people and to “brand” himself. He always wrote with an audience in mind (in my estimation) because he was confident that he was a kind of messiah and that his writings would command great attention and scrutiny after his death. Scholarly examination of the evidence has to take into account the actual evidence first, and if scholars cannot find evidence of sexual abuse of children it is probably because it is not there to be found. There are a number of non-Thelema-affiliated scholars working with the Crowley material today, mostly in Europe (the circle around Wouter Hanegraaf comes to mind) and they would not balk at researching AC’s pedophilia if it was there. Hell, they could make their careers on a discovery like that!
All of this said, there is evidence that sexual intercourse with young girls took place (and perhaps still does) among certain Tantric sects, and is part of the Kalacakra Tantra tradition. There are prescriptions for their selection based on age, appearance, capabilities, knowledge of the Tantras, etc. I believe I’ve written about this already, possibly in The Tantric Alchemist but I’m not sure at the moment. (Child marriage is also common in some areas of Asia.) AC’s knowledge of the Tantras, however, was slight. He only had access to a few texts, and those in English translation (the Max Mueller series, for the most part) and presumably was not aware of the more arcane Tantras where this is discussed. Kenneth Grant knew considerably more about the Tantras than AC, and even in that case there is no hint of child sexual abuse in Grant’s writings or of the possibility of using children in sexual rituals. From my reading of both AC and Grant there is no evidence that they were aware of the specific Tantras to which I refer, since most of them were translated only recently.
The Finders group that was uncovered operating out of Washington DC in the 1980s is much more identified with the deliberate traumatization of children, as covered in the mainstream press as well as in my own work. This group had a CIA connection and was very involved in what appears to have been everything from child trafficking to blood sacrifice rituals at which children were present (and photographs taken of them, clothed and unclothed, during the sacrifice of animals, etc.). This story hit Business Week and other mainstream publications and then died down once CIA quashed the investigation.
You can quote any of this or the previous email, as per your request.
On 6/30/2016 12:33 AM, I wrote:
thanks for the in-depth response. I think my main argument is very simple: knowing what is known about his beliefs, practices, and proclivities, and the set of circumstances in Cefalu, why would anyone think that AC would draw a line at sex with children? And on what grounds?
There is a growing body of evidence that the sexual abuse of children is a central tenet to aristocratic occult (or at least hidden) practices, and even that it is considered as a valid means to increase intelligence and “psychic” capacities in a child. (Are you familiar for example with the “key of solomon” practice of sodomizing male children as a means to raise the kundalini?)
I am not sure why you would assume the passage cited previously must be a case of AC trying to shock future readers, rather than a (somewhat coded, for obvious reasons) record of a ritual? I allow it could be either, but why lean towards one interpretation simply because it is shocking? This prevalent idea that AC was deliberately trying to shock therefore was incapable of actually doing the things he bragged about makes no sense if we consider that one of his primary methods was the destruction of the ego through willed transgression. There is no logical reason to think AC would have stopped at anything to attain his goals. On the contrary. Nor do I think he needed access to tantric texts to know that sexually violating children would be a powerful taboo-breaking “left-hand” ritual.
I am not aware of any testimonies from his children about anything, are you? They seem to have been stricken from the historical record. But as you must know, it is quite uncommon for victims of sexual abuse to speak out, even assuming they remember their abuse, which frequently they do not.
To argue that if scholars haven’t found evidence it is not there to be found is to assign a higher level of integrity and diligence to scholars than I would be inclined to do, at least around this particular subject (child abuse). This must surely go tenfold for Grant. If there’s one thing we know for certain about organized, ritualized sexual abuse of children (besides that it happens), it’s that it is thickly shrouded by the twin layers of secrecy and denial. Jimmy Savile operated at a high level of British society and with the complicity and aid of the entire apparatus of British institutional society, from MI6 to BBC, for several decades. I suspect we only even know about this now because it was deemed suitable to leak the truth, for whatever reasons (probably controlled social destabilization). Even so, the implications of Savile have been largely swept under the rug for most people, due again to the unconscious conspiracy of denial: the desire not to know.
Simply stated: why expect scholars (much less occultists & crowley-ites such as Grant) to be immune to, or unaffiliated with, this tightly organized network of secrecy suppression?
A long reply was waiting for me the next morning (June 30) from Levenda:
Your argument is circular. You’re saying that, with what we know about Crowley, why would anyone think he would draw the line at sex with children; i.e., he must have had sex with children because he was so sleazy. We can say that about a lot of people for whom there is no evidence, either.
I remember very well the Satanic Ritual Abuse hysteria of the 1980s, for instance, when the assumption was made that — since there are such things as occultists and satanists — there must be satanic rituals involving the sacrifice of children. Claims were made that thousands of children were being sacrificed annually in the US alone during satanic rituals by generational satanic cults. There was no evidence for it (there was no evidence for generational satanic cults, either) but that didn’t stop people from making assumptions and wild accusations, ruining innocent people in the process.
Nick Bryant is a friend of mine who covered the Franklin Scandal in depth; we talk about the underground traffic in children, the involvement of celebrities, politicians, etc. We are not naive on this subject. But there is simply no evidence for the type of ritual abuse of children by Crowley that you insist took place. You can ask “why would AC draw a line at sex with children?”. Fair enough. But can you (or anyone) say that he didn’t? That in fact he did have sex with children? In the absence of any kind of evidence — I mean real evidence, not the imaginative deconstruction of his diaries, occult writings, etc. — we have no proof of this. Proof in this case seems to be in the eyes of the beholder. One could write a speculative piece about this, and even then it would be thin.
You know my work. You know the type of documentation, verification, etc. that I do. I don’t write speculative history or conspiracy theory. I investigate, with personal interviews as well as documentation, and report what I find. In an area like this, though, what I report is sometimes only a vague outline of something: a bit like predicting the existence of Pluto because of the eccentric orbit of Neptune. It’s through inference, and when it is I clarify that I am speculating or suggesting and do not insist that my interpretation is the right one, or the only one.
I lean towards my interpretation of the AC passage not because it is shocking, as you imply, but because I consider it within the overall context of his work. It is of a piece. It is consistent with his style, his taste for the bizarre, etc. We have an enormous record of AC’s sexual rituals, almost tedious in their attention to explicit detail. In that case, why would we expect that he would suddenly become coy and neglect to detail for us his sexual conquest of minors?
In addition, AC had to have a context himself for what he was doing. Everything — every ritual, every sex act, every mundane action — was related to the Kabbalistic system as represented by the Golden Dawn. You see that in all his occult diaries. What is the Kabbalistic correspondence for sexual acts with children? What is the Golden Dawn context? There isn’t any.
If you insist that he was not explicit for fear of some kind of legal reprisal (he would not have cared about his reputation, his actions throughout his life are proof of that!), then we are back to square one. He didn’t write about it, and in absence of any other kind of proof we cannot in good faith accuse him of it.
I am not apologizing for Crowley. I am not defending Crowley. He doesn’t need me to do either of that, and I have no interest in it anyway. But I am defending journalistic and academic integrity (or at least my understanding of it), and when you accuse everyone of covering up Crowley’s proposed abuse of children because there is no evidence of it so therefore they must be covering it up you are up a creek without a paddle.
Further, I have spent a lot of time around occultists, Thelemites, satanists, witches, neo-Nazis, magicians, and even Republicans. I have witnessed all sorts of mayhem, from sexual promiscuity to drug abuse to threats of violence, etc. For me this began about 1968 and has continued in one form or another to this day. I am still in contact today with people I first met in the 1970s, so I have the benefit of having seen them grow and evolve, warts and all. I have never seen any hint of pedophilia in any of the groups I have known, nor in connection with any individual person I have known. I can give you chapter and verse on drug use, sexual partners, overdoses, all sorts of other scandals, etc. but there has been no evidence — not even rumor or gossip — about child abuse. Well, except among the Republicans. (!)
AC is long dead, so we can say whatever we like about him without fear of being sued, and without fear of damaging his reputation. But we are in McMartin territory here, and it’s a dangerous place to be. I am sure you or anyone else could go through my own published work and pull a sentence here or there to make it seem I am advocating something hideous. But what that means is that you have begun with a conclusion and worked backward from there. I can’t in good conscience accept that type of approach, not only because it is unethical but also because it simply fails to make its case.
You are cynical concerning academia, believing that they would not touch child abuse. Jasun, with all the scholarship recently on the subject of AC — including his sexuality — coming out of respected academic quarters in the past ten years, believe me proof of pedophilia would have been pounced upon. I spent a lot of time in the Netherlands among academics there and they would have had no problem with reporting AC’s pedophilia if they had evidence that it existed.
You can’t assert that just because a society is secret that it automatically implies their members are pedophiles. It’s just the rankest conspiracy theorizing. False equivalencies, guilt by association, and all the sins committed by the Alex Jones of the world to further an agenda and get more followers as mindless as their leader. Are there groups of individuals who abuse children? Of course, there are. Are celebrities involved? Not just possibly, but probably. Are some of these nutcases employing occult symbols they’ve found in a book by Crowley, or Levi, or Montague Summers or A. E. Waite? Of course. Why not? There is evidence of much of this, as we have seen to our horror the past several decades. But AC specifically? I don’t see it. I haven’t seen it. No one I know has seen evidence of it. And more to the point, why would we care? AC is dead. There are a lot of other people to focus on in this field, people still alive. The Franklin group; Jimmy Saville; the Belgian cult, Finders, etc. AC’s influence over today’s crop of pedophiles has got to be non-existent, or nearly so.
Anyway, that’s my take.
This was my response:
>Your argument is circular. You’re saying that, with what we know about Crowley, why would anyone think he would draw the line at sex with children; i.e., he must have had sex with children because he was so sleazy.
Not at all. I am not saying AC must have had sex with children because he was so sleazy, but that AC most likely had sex with children considering
a) his general philosophy of breaking all taboos, including or especially those that appalled him personally
b) what we know of other acts which he was involved in, including rape, animal sacrifice (toad & cat), and bestiality (having Leah copulate with a goat, before sacrificing it, which even AC’s bellwethers such as Richard Kaczinksy allow probably happened, however botched it was
c) his specific teachings around children and sexuality and the fact he allowed children to be present at sex magickal rituals at the Abbey
d) the death of at least one child during the same period
e) his written descriptions of rape and torture of children
f) his known associations with individuals and groups who have been directly implicated in organized child sexual abuse, such as Tom Driberg (associate of Lord Boothby & the Krays), whom AC named his successor as world teacher (Driberg declined), and MI6, who covered up Savile’s crimes for decades and who have been directly links to child sex abuse networks.
This is what you call circular argumentation?
I am glad you cite “the Satanic Ritual Abuse hysteria of the 1980s,” with the old mantra of “There was no evidence for it.” This is simply not true, as I addressed in a recent piece. Not only was, & is, there evidence, there have been confessions and convictions (tho not around the McMartin case; I do have a FOI document showing that the tunnels were found however, jpgs attached). I am afraid you have been hoodwinked around this subject, like so many others.
> One could write a speculative piece about this, and even then it would be thin.
And yet you have not asked to see or hear my own evidence, tho I offered. The waters I am wading through are as thick as treacle.
>In that case, why would we expect that he would suddenly become coy and neglect to detail for us his sexual conquest of minors?
Because of the fourth part of the magician’s oath? Savile also bragged about all sorts of deviancy, but no one took him seriously. For AC to be so bold about admitting, exaggerating, or even inventing, his more devious tendencies, such as his “joke” about committing 150 child sacrifices a year, is a great way to muddy the waters and obscure anything he might have actually done; not to mention a way to sow the seeds for arguments such as your own.
You seem to want to say that we can believe Crowley when insists he is opposed to rape, but not when he brags about doing it (then he was just spouting hot air); isn’t that the inverse of what we generally know about criminals?
>In addition, AC had to have a context himself for what he was doing. Everything — every ritual, every sex act, every mundane action — was related to the Kabbalistic system as represented by the Golden Dawn.
That seems highly improbable, considering his opinion of the GD. I think it’s much more accurate to say that Liber Al was his context, and LA expressly proscribes [sic] child sacrifice on at least two occasions. (Admittedly not the same as sex with children, but once the one line is crossed, the other doesn’t seem to present much of a problem.)
>What is the Kabbalistic correspondence for sexual acts with children? What is the Golden Dawn context? There isn’t any.
That you know of. Yet you well know that the deeper rites and practices are kept secret.
>If you insist that he was not explicit for fear of some kind of legal reprisal (he would not have cared about his reputation, his actions throughout his life are proof of that!)
Again, I disagree, and I think the proof is that even researchers who claim not to have any stake in Thelema are still defending his reputation (while claiming not to be). AC’s rep is in remarkably good condition considering everything. His influence meanwhile has been incalculable. Would this be the case had it become known that he committed acts that almost no one can publicly defend? What has come out, the goat copulation, the cat sacrifice, the drug use, the homosexuality, can all be viewed by the intelligentsia as either humorously kinky or ahead of its time, or both.
But then, the intelligentsia have a history of advocating child sex, too. Your view of AC seems to leave him out of the loop entirely, and make him seem like a rather paltry beast.
>Further, I have spent a lot of time around occultists, Thelemites, satanists, witches, neo-Nazis, magicians, and even Republicans.
I am aware of this, as well as your alleged involvement in the Necronomicon penning…
> I have never seen any hint of pedophilia in any of the groups I have known, nor in connection with any individual person I have known.
And yet sexual abuse of children is so widespread that even the average person today regularly encounters both victims and perpetrators of it, usually without knowing it. (This is an inevitable conclusion based on statistical deduction. See Lori Handrahan’s figures if you doubt it. I’ve attached a sample)
> But we are in McMartin territory here, and it’s a dangerous place to be.
Surely, tho not the way you mean it.
>You are cynical concerning academia, believing that they would not touch child abuse.
They might, but academics are generally dependent on funding of some sort or at least have positions to protect.
> I spent a lot of time in the Netherlands among academics there and they would have had no problem with reporting AC’s pedophilia if they had evidence that it existed.
So essentially you are saying I should leave it to the experts? Do you even know anything about my family background? It’s possible my grandfather may even have met Crowley, considering the overlap of their respective circles. When I am researching & reporting these things, I am referring to my own personal history and knowledge. You can try to pull rank on me, but all it does is betray a lack of professional courtesy or consideration. It also suggests that, despite what you claim, you have an unspoken stake in the game, whatever it may be.
>You can’t assert that just because a society is secret that it automatically implies their members are pedophiles. It’s just the rankest conspiracy theorizing.
It would be, if I’d asserted that, but since I didn’t, you are grasping at straw men.
> I don’t see it. I haven’t seen it. No one I know has seen evidence of it. And more to the point, why would we care? AC is dead.
Amazing. Apparently you see me as on some sort of witch hunt? Yet, on the one hand, you say there’s no evidence for it and there can’t be because if there were, you and your associates would have found it and already cried it to the heavens; then on the other you ask why we should care anyway, so why not just leave it alone? Nothing to see here, move along.
Yet this came in today from one of these AC scholars, High Urban: “The connections you’re exploring are intriguing. I’m not really working on Crowley at the moment, so I would suggest you contact others who are more active in that area now — Marco Pasi is the first that comes to mind, and then maybe Gordan Djurdjevic.”
> There are a lot of other people to focus on in this field, people still alive. The Franklin group; Jimmy Saville
Savile died in 2011, which is the only reason anything came out about his activities, at all.
>AC’s influence over today’s crop of pedophiles has got to be non-existent, or nearly so.
This is another highly questionable assertion. AC’s influence, via Leary, the Beatles, et al, is literally incalculable, and nowhere more so than in the sexually “progressive” and occultist circles.
That said, I appreciate the opportunity this has provided for me to clarify my thoughts, & I hope my replies haven’t been too curt or cocky.
Levenda:
One by one:
>This is what you call circular argumentation?
Uh, yeah. Kinda. Go back over those lines. You could use them to create a character profile but not to create a legal case of child abuse. Yes, you are saying that because AC was sleazy — general philosophy of breaking taboos, other acts he committed, etc etc. — he must have abused children. You are also using guilt by association (a tired but still effective tactic of conspiracy theorists) in paragraph (f) particularly. But there is nothing in (a) through (f) that can be used as proof that he was involved in child abuse. You’re just saying what a hideous guy he was, so why not call him a child abuser as well? And what is the value of a “most likely” assertion? Child abuse is a serious accusation; it deserves a lot more than a “most likely.”
> I am afraid you have been hoodwinked around this subject, like so many others.
I don’t think I am the one being hoodwinked. If I do not see evidence of something, how can I believe it to be true? What are the rules of evidence here? or even of journalistic integrity? If you include the abuse of children by Catholic priests, you might overreach and claim it was ritual abuse (since the abusers were priests) but even then it would be weak unless you had evidence the abuse took place as part of a ritual. The recent piece for disinfo that you wrote is more opinion than evidence. You’re cherry-picking your sources, looking for citations that will suggest what you’re saying is true. On what basis do those psychologists surveyed “believe” that cases of ritual abuse of children are “true”? You cite John Mack, who believed that alien abduction experiences were “true” to the extent that the abductees were suffering from PTSD, etc. He knew something was going on there, and had conducted interviews and collated data, etc. You dismiss him, and Kripal, (both unfairly in my view) simply because they were intrigued by the ET phenomenon rather than the SRA phenomenon.
There is child abuse in the world. No doubt about it. No one will dispute that. And there are priests, preachers, politicians, and perverts of every demographic who were/are involved in it. That does not mean there is a vast, underground cult of Crowley-inspired or Crowley-worshipping pedophiles, however. None of the evidence you cite can be used to prove that specific case. And, no, I am not lying or misinformed on this. I’ve been to SMART meetings, I’ve been to countless encounters with AC believers, with satanists, etc. and you can extend that to include intelligence types, military personnel (in more than one country), etc etc. In the SMART conference some years ago, for instance, all I heard about the ritual abuse was that it was conducted by Josef Mengele and George Bush, as well as Henry Kissinger. I am a fan of none of those guys, but still … some claims strain credulity for a lot of reasons. And not once was Crowley mentioned, by the way. It was all Nazis and Republicans. Go figure.
>And yet you have not asked to see or hear my own evidence, tho I offered. The waters I am wading through are as thick as treacle.
If you had evidence to convince me that AC was a pedophile or abused children, I am sure you would have offered it by now.
>Because of the fourth part of the magician’s oath? . . .. You seem to want to say that we can believe Crowley when insists he is opposed to rape, but not when he brags about doing it (then he was just spouting hot air); isn’t that the inverse of what we generally know about criminals?”
The fourth part is to “keep silent”: is that your opinion about Crowley? Really? He was not a man to “keep silent” about anything! So you’re saying that the “150 child sacrifices a year” was a way to muddy the waters … the logic of this escapes me. He had no need to “muddy the waters.” All he had to do was not talk about it! This is what I mean about circular reasoning. He claimed 150 sacrifices so it must be true; he claimed it was not true, so it must be true; since it was not true, it must be true. At what point do we acknowledge that it was just what AC said it was: a reference to masturbation?
And what is that about rape? By linking AC with the rape of an older woman you are making the claim that this is evidence of his abuse of young children. Isn’t that the inverse of what we generally know about criminals?
>That seems highly improbable, considering his opinion of the GD. I think it’s much more accurate to say that Liber Al was his context, and LA expressly proscribes child sacrifice on at least two occasions. (Admittedly not the same as sex with children, but once the one line is crossed, the other doesn’t seem to present much of a problem.)
You are showing your ignorance of Crowley, the GD and all of that here. This single sentence reveals to me that when it comes to modern ceremonial magic — and especially of the type practiced by Crowley — you haven’t done the reading. Crowley may have had a dim view of the GD as an organization, but he used the GD rituals and Kabbalistic context to the end of his days. Membership in that order defined him as a magician. All of his workings — at Cefalu, in North Africa, etc — were based on GD rituals. Liber AL itself is written using GD imagery, for instance. You can’t understand AC without understanding the GD, as I have written and proven already. His magical diaries are replete with references that only make sense to someone deeply familiar with GD terminology.
As for the claim that Liber AL “proscribes” child sacrifice (I think you meant “prescribes”?) off the top of my head I don’t know what you’re referring to, but I submit the Bible also prescribes child sacrifice. So maybe that goes to your point? If you’re referring to Chapter III verses 12 and 24, those verses (and the whole of AL) have been subjected to all sorts of deconstruction and explication, and you would have to show me that you were aware of those arguments and could refute them. In any case,where is the prescription for ritual sexual abuse of children?
> Yet you well know that the deeper rites and practices are kept secret.
Again, Jasun, you are showing your ignorance of the subject matter. You are also letting your paranoia show. “If there are secret rituals, then they must involve ritual child abuse.” That is what I mean by your circular argumentation. Actually a great deal is known about the Golden Dawn and regardless of whether or not there were “deeper rites” the Golden Dawn system is a system of correspondences on the Tree of Life. AC would have had to identify the “ritual child abuse” correspondence in order to work it within the system and later to write it down in Kabbalistic terminology. If AC could do that (assuming he could) then anyone else can do that. It’s a system. All the moving parts are known. His ritual sexual acts with women and men are all detailed in his diaries using a shorthand familiar to anyone who has knowledge of the system.
>Again, I disagree, and I think the proof is that even researchers who claim not to have any stake in Thelema are still defending his reputation (while claiming not to be). AC’s rep is in remarkably good condition considering everything. His influence meanwhile has been incalculable. Would this be the case had it become known that he committed acts that almost no one can publicly defend? What has come out, the goat copulation, the cat sacrifice, the drug use, the homosexuality, can all be viewed by the intelligentsia as either humorously kinky or ahead of its time, or both. But then, the intelligentsia have a history of advocating child sex, too. Your view of AC seems to leave him out of the loop entirely, and make him seem like a rather paltry beast
The researchers you mention are not “defending his reputation” just because they do not hold the same ideas you do! It seems as if, if someone disagrees with you, then they are covertly in favor of child abuse or have a hidden agenda. They are, as you wrote, “lying” or “misinformed”, etc. I wrote that “his actions throughout his life are proof” of the fact that he did not care about his reputation. You say you disagree, and give as proof researchers born after AC died who you claim are defending his reputation. That’s not proof of AC caring about his reputation. He had no control over what researchers fifty years after he was dead were going to say. And “the intelligentsia have a history of advocating child sex, too.” Really? All the intelligentsia? Can you show me where?
>And yet sexual abuse of children is so widespread that even the average person today regularly encounters both victims and perpetrators of it, usually without knowing it. (This is an inevitable conclusion based on statistical deduction. See Lori Handrahan’s figures if you doubt it. I’ve attach a sample)”
I am not claiming that sexual abuse of children is not widespread. I know people who were abused as children, some physically, some sexually, from different countries and times. What I am saying is that there is no evidence that the individuals or groups with which I am familiar are abusers. If you’re trying to tell me that, yes, they are abusers and I am not aware of it, then please show me the proof. In any case, this is again an example of how you make your arguments. If I don’t see something, then it means it was carefully hidden (not that it wasn’t there to start with). Circles within circles. Just because sexual abuse is widespread does not mean that everyone I know is an abuser.
> academics are generally dependent on funding of some sort or at least have positions to protect.
Yet, they write about Crowley and his sexuality, etc. without fear of losing any funding. Again, you see absence of evidence as evidence itself. Writing about UFOs is far more lethal to a university tenure than writing about Crowley and sexuality, for instance.
>So essentially you are saying I should leave it to the experts? Do you even know anything about my family background? It’s possible my grandfather may even have met Crowley, considering the overlap of their respective circles. When I am researching & reporting these things, I am referring to my own personal history and knowledge. You can try to pull rank on me, but all it does is betray a lack of professional courtesy or consideration. It also suggests that, despite what you claim, you have an unspoken stake in the game, whatever it may be.
Wow. What does my academic background, such as it is, have to do with “pulling rank” or “leaving it to the experts”? Should I apologize for having done my own research? I thought it was my particular background that was the reason for you contacting me in the first place.
I think I’ve struck a nerve there, somewhere, Jasun. You are taking this comment the wrong way, and it shows your insecurity. I am doing you the courtesy and consideration of answering this and your earlier emails. What I am saying is that they haven’t come up with the pedophile angle, and no one else I know has. The “experts” are not the Alpha and Omega of research, but they are a start, and they have done a lot of work in AC lately and I am not sure you are aware of their research. And then you write “it’s possible” that your grandfather “may even have met Crowley.” That’s a lot of qualifications in one sentence. And what if he had? It’s possible that my maternal grandfather met Crowley, too, but it’s not something I can prove so there is relatively little value in even discussing it. So what?
And I resent any implication that I have an “unspoken stake in the game” whatever that is. This is how you approach the subject: those who disagree with you, honestly disagree, are part of some conspiracy and are defending AC or covering up his alleged child abuse. If that is what you feel, then there is no purpose in continuing this correspondence. I think you would agree.
You say you are referring to your own “personal history and knowledge” but I am quite certain that personal history did not include being abused by Crowley. Why don’t you stick to your own personal story without making claims you can’t support? About the best you can do with your thesis at this point is to say “Maybe Crowley, for all his faults, also abused children. We don’t know for sure, but it’s possible.” Not really “breaking news”, but at least it would be honest.
>It would be, if I’d asserted that, but since I didn’t, you are grasping at straw men.
I think your hands are full of straw men at this point, Jasun. And your correspondence is full of references to secret cabals of pedophiles, so what am I supposed to conclude?
>Apparently you see me as on some sort of witch hunt? Yet, on the one hand, you say there’s no evidence for it and there can’t be because if there were, you and your associates would have found it and already cried it to the heavens; then on the other you ask why we should care anyway, so why not just leave it alone? Nothing to see here, move along.
In the first place, yes, Jasun. You are on a witch hunt. How else do describe it? It’s McCarthyism applied to Crowley. You are twisting my words and ignoring my context, just as the Senator did when it came to suspected Communists. You are attacking me personally because I disagree with you. The old ad hominem approach, also used by conspiracy theorists. I heartily recommend you do as Dr Urban suggested: contact Marco Pasi and Gordon Djurdjevic, as these are two of the much-abhorred “experts” to which I referred earlier. And don’t make the same mistake with them as you did with me: accuse them of being somehow in the bag for Crowley because they insist on some kind of proof of your assertions.
Cheers, and good luck
My response:
thanks for taking the time with that, Peter.
Unfortunately the gulf seems to be widening rather than narrowing so, as you suggest, there may not be anything to gain by continuing. Somehow I am compelled to respond to your points however, & give it one last try. I will understand if you don’t feel the desire to respond and won’t take it personally. Do let me know however if there’s anything you wrote which you do not want me to quote, as I am interested in presenting opposing viewpoints in the book, and yours is a strong and clear voice of such.
I’d also offer, I hope not presumptuously, Blake’s aphorism that opposition is true friendship, so maybe true opposition can, on occasion, clear the way for friendship, or at least sympathy…
>That does not mean there is a vast, underground cult of Crowley-inspired or Crowley-worshipping pedophiles, however. None of the evidence you cite can be used to prove that specific case.
As if anyone could prove that (in the way you seem to mean) if it were true! Isn’t it a bit like saying don’t make wild claims about life after death because you aren’t dead?
Your standard of evidence and argumentation strikes me time and again as a double standard.
> The recent piece for disinfo that you wrote is more opinion than evidence. You’re cherry-picking your sources, looking for citations that will suggest what you’re saying is true.
It’s called making a case.
> all I heard about the ritual abuse was that it was conducted by Josef Mengele and George Bush, as well as Henry Kissinger.
It’s curious how you once argued with me about the need to take alien abductees seriously, yet you are happy to dismiss accounts of human interference simply because they involve public figures. There’s that weird double standard again.
>If you had evidence to convince me that AC was a pedophile or abused children, I am sure you would have offered it by now.
“Evidence to convince” depends on two variables; one of them is your openness to question.
>The fourth part is to “keep silent”: is that your opinion about Crowley? Really? He was not a man to “keep silent” about anything!
Circular logic: because he talked about some things, he was terrible at keeping silence. Because he couldn’t keep his silence, he must have talked about everything. You seem confident to pit your own intelligence against Crowley’s & assume you can anticipate all of his moves & motives. I am still trying to get to the bottom of that.
>So you’re saying that the “150 child sacrifices a year” was a way to muddy the waters … the logic of this escapes me. He had no need to “muddy the waters.” All he had to do was not talk about it!
You missed the point: he bragged about something extreme in order to get a reputation for telling tall tales so no one would believe him about other, more veiled admissions. Savile did the same thing. I believe it’s called glamor magic.
>At what point do we acknowledge that it was just what AC said it was: a reference to masturbation?
where’s your proof?
>And what is that about rape? By linking AC with the rape of an older woman you are making the claim that this is evidence of his abuse of young children.
No, I was making the claim that it was evidence of him lying when he said he was against rape. You seem to me too intelligent to misread me that badly, which makes me suspect you are deliberately distorting my arguments so as to hijack the discussion. Either that or “I’ve struck a nerve.”
>You are showing your ignorance of Crowley, the GD and all of that here. This single sentence reveals to me that when it comes to modern ceremonial magic — and especially of the type practiced by Crowley — you haven’t done the reading.
AC may have done a lot of stuff by the book, GD or otherwise. To then argue that it was the only basis for any of his magick is unfounded. I have found, or formulated, several bases for child sexual abuse as a magickal ritual, none of them coming from the GD, as far as I know. So what? Even from a conventional angle, Crowley is considered a pioneer.
> You can’t understand AC without understanding the GD, as I have written and proven already.
So then you have proven that anything anyone else writes about AC is worthless unless they have taken the steps you prescribe?
>His magical diaries are replete with references that only make sense to someone deeply familiar with GD terminology.
Ditto. It must be nice to be “in the know.”
>Again, Jasun, you are showing your ignorance of the subject matter. You are also letting your paranoia show. “If there are secret rituals, then they must involve ritual child abuse.”
again, this is a complete distortion; what I said was, if there was ritual child abuse, it would be a closely guarded secret, a fact that should be obvious to anyone and that renders several of your arguments hollow. Not to mention that old trick of turning it around and accusing me of citing lack of evidence as proof of conspiracy, which I have never done. But again, since you are not that obtuse but in fact a wily old goat, it makes me wonder who you are arguing on behalf of, at this point?
> That is what I mean by your circular argumentation.
and that is what I mean by straw men
> AC would have had to identify the “ritual child abuse” correspondence in order to work it within the system and later to write it down in Kabbalistic terminology. If AC could do that (assuming he could) then anyone else can do that. It’s a system. All the moving parts are known. His ritual sexual acts with women and men are all detailed in his diaries using a shorthand familiar to anyone who has knowledge of the system.
Are you honestly trying to argue that occultism and child sexual abuse are not interconnected? That it is all Christian hysteria, combined with a clever disinfo strategy to discredit and scarify occultism? If so, let’s see the proof. That’s a real conspiracy theory! It is also one I am not entirely closed to, and in fact I consider it frequently. I always come back to the same question, however: which is more likely, that a bunch of very clever, sophisticated, and thorough individuals are conspiring to make us believe that occult child abuse rituals form the basis of modern society; or that a bunch of very clever, sophisticated, and thorough individuals are conspiring to make us believe that occult child abuse rituals do not happen, at all, or only in a random, haphazard fashion that has nothing at all to do with the higher echelons of the ruling class (who have no interest in occult rituals, even if they like to diddle kids occasionally)?
>The researchers you mention are not “defending his reputation” just because they do not hold the same ideas you do! It seems as if, if someone disagrees with you, then they are covertly in favor of child abuse or have a hidden agenda.
Disingenuous logic. We are talking about you and the subject of organized ritual child abuse, not “someone” and some random argument.
> They are, as you wrote, “lying” or “misinformed”, etc.
When it comes to ritual abuse, I believe this is the case, & the article you dismiss as “opinion” establishes (so far as that is ever possible) this clearly and categorically, since ritual abuse happens and has been proven to do so. I note you didn’t address the tunnels under McMartin.
>I wrote that “his actions throughout his life are proof” of the fact that he did not care about his reputation. You say you disagree, and give as proof researchers born after AC died who you claim are defending his reputation.
No, I give as evidence AC’s own admissions about his concern, combined with a logical deduction that a man expecting to have a religion based around his writings would be aware of how his own reputation might compromise or enhance that process.
>And “the intelligentsia have a history of advocating child sex, too.” Really? All the intelligentsia? Can you show me where?
Start with Gore Vidal if you are really interested, which I increasingly doubt.
> If you’re trying to tell me that, yes, they are abusers and I am not aware of it, then please show me the proof.
I think one of the main causes of the gulf between us is that you are extremely literal-minded where I am not. I raise questions, you demand proof of the answer, rather than pursuing the question further, which is all I am ever asking of anyone.
> In any case, this is again an example of how you make your arguments. If I don’t see something, then it means it was carefully hidden (not that it wasn’t there to start with).
It means only that not seeing something is not proof it is not there. If we do not remember being wounded but have scars on our body, we can safely deduce that something happened.
> Circles within circles. Just because sexual abuse is widespread does not mean that everyone I know is an abuser.
It means that, unless you were a hermit, and even outside all of your occult fraternity affiliations, some people you know must be; which is exactly what I said the first time around, and now you have made me repeat it.
>Yet, they write about Crowley and his sexuality, etc. without fear of losing any funding. Again, you see absence of evidence as evidence itself.
Again, you present a meaningless argument and then sit back as if you have said something meaningful. Of course there is no embargo on writing about AC & sexuality, at least as long as it doesn’t challenge the dominant narrative or threaten to kill the Crowley cash cow. Have you seen the latest bio from North Atlantic? It could come with a line of Crowley dolls.
>Wow. What does my academic background, such as it is, have to do with “pulling rank” or “leaving it to the experts”? Should I apologize for having done my own research?
Only for suggesting that “experts” should have the final say, even when they have shirked on their own research.
>I thought it was my particular background that was the reason for you contacting me in the first place.
Of course, I want to hear what knowledgeable researchers have to say; it’s just disappointing when what it mostly comes down is: “Nothing to see here, run along now and get your proper training, and meanwhile let us experts continue to define the narrative.”
>I think I’ve struck a nerve there, somewhere, Jasun. You are taking this comment the wrong way, and it shows your insecurity.
Is that fatherly concern, or the sound of the intelligentsia gloating?
>I am doing you the courtesy and consideration of answering this and your earlier emails.
Noted, and appreciated.
> What I am saying is that they haven’t come up with the pedophile angle, and no one else I know has. The “experts” are not the Alpha and Omega of research, but they are a start
they are not the start for me, they are only a stop along the way.
>they have done a lot of work in AC lately and I am not sure you are aware of their research.
One of my reasons for writing you; but unless they are addressing the material we are discussing and providing a realistic interpretation of it, I just don’t have the time to read every AC paper and publication.
> And then you write “it’s possible” that your grandfather “may even have met Crowley.” That’s a lot of qualifications in one sentence. And what if he had? It’s possible that my maternal grandfather met Crowley, too, but it’s not something I can prove so there is relatively little value in even discussing it. So what?
My point was that I am also working with a direct past experience of the networks, beliefs, and practices which I believe AC can be associated with.
>In the first place, yes, Jasun. You are on a witch hunt. How else do describe it?
An attempt to get to the truth. The notion of a witch hunt presumes a moral directive and a desire to punish or destroy. I think that’s your Jesuit training speaking.
Peace out
I sincerely hoped Levenda would not respond at this point, but he did, with another massive diatribe.
>It’s called making a case.
No. It’s called cooking the books. It’s called starting from a conclusion and working backwards. You can’t make a case if all you cite is spectral evidence.
>It’s curious how you once argued with me about the need to take alien abductees seriously, yet you are happy to dismiss accounts of human interference simply because they involve public figures. There’s that weird double standard again.
So, what you’re saying is, I should accept at face value the claim that Mengele — who has been dead a long time — was abusing children at an air base in the US a decade later? I take alien abduction cases seriously without believing they are cases of alien abduction, since we have not defined what an “alien” is. The phenomenon is real; we just don’t understand what it is. The people suffering what they believe to be SRA may indeed be suffering something similar to, or identical to, the PTSD suffered by the abductees. We simply do not have enough information. But I don’t believe that Josef Mengele rose from the dead and abused children; I do believe that the claimant is suffering. How and why that suffering originated is still up to investigation. No double standard; it’s the same standard, applied equally to two different cases.
>”Evidence to convince” depends on two variables; one of them is your openness to question.
Come on, Jasun. I don’t need to be “open to question” if the evidence is there. It will speak for itself. Don’t claim that I am close-minded because I don’t agree with you! What is the other variable?
>Circular logic: because he talked about some things, he was terrible at keeping silence. Because he couldn’t keep his silence, he must have talked about everything. You seem confident to pit your own intelligence against Crowley’s & assume you can anticipate all of his moves & motives. I am still trying to get to the bottom of that.
I am not doing any such thing! I am doing what any investigator, researcher, historian does: examine the evidence, the documents, retrace the steps. If you read his works you will see that he copped to everything he did, no matter how heinous. Did he keep secrets? Maybe, why not? Does that automatically mean the secrets were about child abuse? Why? Maybe he was Jack the Ripper and was keeping silent about that? You need some kind of metric, Jasun, but you are all over the place. It’s child abuse or nothing.
> I was making the claim that it was evidence of him lying when he said he was against rape. You seem to me too intelligent to misread me that badly, which makes me suspect you are deliberately distorting my arguments so as to hijack the discussion. Either that or “I’ve struck a nerve.”
Oh, please. Here you are accusing me — who disagrees with your premise — of being deliberately deceitful or deceptive. Another ad hominem response. Did AC ever lie about anything? Probably. Therefore that makes him a child abuser … we always come back to that, which is the central core of your mission it seems, which is why I do not believe I misread you at all. The account he gave was of an abused fourteen year old boy lashing out against his abuser. Who knows how much of that account is true, how much he embellished, etc. but that is still beside the point. Maybe, since he was abused by this 19 year old, he was the victim. She should have been arrested, tried and convicted. You can make all kinds of cases here. We don’t know what the truth is, absent any evidence.
>AC may have done a lot of stuff by the book, GD or otherwise. To then argue that it was the only basis for any of his magick is unfounded. I have found, or formulated, several bases for child sexual abuse as a magickal ritual, none of them coming from the GD, as far as I know. So what? Even from a conventional angle, Crowley is considered a pioneer.
You seem to be arguing from a lack of proof, again. Why is it unfounded? Just because you have found or formulated your own ideas of child sex abuse as ritual does not mean that these ideas have any weight in the real world of child ritual sexual abuse. They are theories, and as such need to be evaluated according to some kind of objective metric. Or else, this is all just fantasy. If my claims are unfounded, prove it. Crowley experimented with Tantra, with Sufism, with a wide variety of religious and spiritual disciplines, but always brought them back to the GD context. He was mistaken in many of the assumptions he made about Egyptology (for instance) and other religions, based on an imperfect understanding available at the time. He wrote scandalous pieces about sex, and was ostracized because of them. I’ve written about all of this, in some detail. I am not defending AC as an intellectual, as an occultist, or anything else. I am not defending him: I am simply not convinced by your theory. It’s the theory itself with which I have a problem. And on what do you base your theories of child sexual abuse as a magickal ritual? Do you have experience performing ritual magic? Or is this purely an intellectual exercise?
>So then you have proven that anything anyone else writes about AC is worthless unless they have taken the steps you prescribe?
Pretty much. If you don’t understand the language in which he is writing, how can you offer a translation? How do you know, for instance, what an “Equinox of the Gods” means (so central to an understanding of Liber AL) unless you are familiar with the GD context from which it was taken?
>It must be nice to be “in the know.”
It only takes some reading, Jasun. There’s a lot of that material around. So much of it is free on the Net, too. There is no excuse for not knowing this if you are trying to build a solid case. You are actually being sarcastic because I have done the reading? Seriously? Is that some major accomplishment or something?
>Are you honestly trying to argue that occultism and child sexual abuse are not interconnected? That it is all Christian hysteria, combined with a clever disinfo strategy to discredit and scarify occultism? If so, let’s see the proof. That’s a real conspiracy theory! It is also one I am not entirely closed to, and in fact I consider it frequently. I always come back to the same question, however: which is more likely, that a bunch of very clever, sophisticated, and thorough individuals are conspiring to make us believe that occult child abuse rituals form the basis of modern society; or that a bunch of very clever, sophisticated, and thorough individuals are conspiring to make us believe that occult child abuse rituals do not happen, at all, or only in a random, haphazard fashion that has nothing at all to do with the higher echelons of the ruling class (who have no interest in occult rituals, even if they like to diddle kids occasionally)?
Here we go again. Occultism and child sexual abuse are interconnected to the extent that occultism, unemployment, and bad teeth are interconnected. You are going to find a lot of unemployed occultists, and a lot of occultists with poor dental hygiene. I am sure you will also find occultists who have abused children. I mean, you are coming to me (I assume) because I have some background in this field. I’ve been studying occultism since the early 1960s when I was still a child. I’ve been to Wiccan rituals, OTO rituals, and everything in between. I’ve read extensively in the literature. I do not see child abuse as some kind of “basis of modern society” or some kind of foundation for occult rituals. I’ve been in enough occult rituals to know. You can’t take one piece of data and extrapolate an entire worldview from it, especially not if it comes to making some serious allegations.
Look at it this way. I can take everything you’ve written — in your emails to me, as well as what you have posted online — and build a very convincing case that your obsession with this subject is a desperate, guilt-ridden attempt to disguise your own abuse of children. Do I believe that? Of course, not. You would quite rightly demand to see evidence, proof of my allegations. And all I would provide as evidence is the same type of proof you have offered against Crowley and nameless occultists. How do you prove a negative? You can’t. All you can do is prove a positive. You can insist that my refusal to accept your view of Crowley as a child molester is evidence that I am also a child molester or a defender of child molesters, but we’ve been through that kind of thing before in this country and it didn’t end well.
>Disingenuous logic. We are talking about you and the subject of organized ritual child abuse, not “someon