Aleister Crowley

[Steven]

Blunt was even a phoney when it came to his art 'expertise'.*


*...says the twit who has no 0-Levels.

 

[Tempest63]

*...says the twit who has no 0-Levels.

Ahh, O Levels. The memory still terrifies me, yet I feel sorry for them. Unceremoniously dumped in favour of GCSE’s.
I took a handful when I was 15 instead of the usual 16 years old and on passing thought I would go into an A level class after the summer holidays. No says the school, took the same O Levels with a different board in the following Easter with similar results only to have to take them again with the original board in the summer at 16 years old with the rest of my year group. The wonders of a secondary modern education. 9 O Levels in only three subjects, Maths, English and Physics. And they wonder why I didn’t want to stay on until I was 18?

https://www.schooldash.com/school/126673/

It was all boys when I attended. I left there the summer of 79 aged 16.

 

[XEPER_]

I recently bought City of the Beast after (I'm sure) it received a glowing review in FT. I'm not really into it though so it'll be up on ebay in a week or two.
If anyone's read any other good, RECENT books about Crowley I'd love to know about them.

I just wanted to add to this earlier post to revise my opinion on that book. It's actually really good, despite the bizarre printing where most of the page is blank and the text is in a tiny font.

 

[Floyd]

The main qualification for espionage seems to have been a posh accent.
Works both ways of course: a posh enough demeanour will buy you protection if you're revealed to have been actually spying for the Russians.
Two words - Anthony Blunt.

Well, Blunt was an art historian (employed by the royal family at one point) and being able to speak another language fluently, greatly helps as well of course - which, especially back then, would only really be the preserve of the upper classes.

(I've got my suspicions about some of the bilingual/multilingual lot on here to be honest)..............

 

[Steven]

An extract from an interview with Alan McGee, former boss of Creation Records and the subject of a recent biopic:

'Perhaps the most striking cameo is that given to Aleister Crowley, the infamous occultist, writer, artist and long-standing source of fascination to musicians and their associates.

Crowley is the basis of Moran and Bremner’s belief that the film is partly about something akin to magic and alchemy. Played by Steven Berkoff, he appears as an apparition, advising McGee to “let go of your past, [and] stay on the path you have chosen” to “finally achieve greatness”. And in the film’s closing moments, McGee is glimpsed in what looks like a wizard’s costume, apparently casting spells.

This material is based based on his post-Creation interest in an occult practice known as “chaos magic”, which flowered when he lived, for a while, in rural mid-Wales. “I was into it for about 10 years,” McGee tells me. “I had this big house that was on a ley line. That’s why I moved there. I was a house-dad, and I was doing lots of magic.” Did it work? “Arguably, yeah. I don’t really get involved in it now. But when I was doing a lot of prescription drugs, it made a lot of sense.”

At this, he laughs like a drain. What did he take from it? “Well, I think it’s all possible.” Anything? “Yeah. I got into Crowley first, but chaos magic was what I was really into. It’s kind of post-punk magic.”

----

A possible connection on this theme, from later in the interview:

'One of Moran’s favourite sequences is built around My Bloody Valentine’s You Made Me Realise, the 1988 song whose live versions were soon distinguished by a long section of mind-boggling noise known to make people faint. “We worked really, really hard on that. And that was such a fantastic surprise for the audience – for everybody. The actors played live, and they were brilliant. It made everybody in the room fall in love with My Bloody Valentine: the cast, the extras, the crew. I just let the cameras run and it became this fantastic mosh.”'

----

On You Made Me Realise:

'During live performances the band repeats a single chord from the song for as long as they felt bearable, the song descending into cacophony, usually lasting around 15 minutes, although there are reports of shows where it went on for well over half an hour. For the 2008–09 reunion shows, "You Made Me Realise" brought each show to an ear-splitting conclusion, reaching up to 130 dB.

From the 2014 documentary Beautiful Noise, Billy Corgan, on the long noise section played live, said:

"It's one of those things where, it was full volume
and for the first three minutes it's like "oh okay this is kind of cool".
Then you're like "This is really too much. I wish they'd fucking stop".
And then at about 7 minutes it actually became kind of funny.
And about 10 minutes in you start actually getting into it."

and Colm Ó Cíosóig interpreted audience reaction as:

'We hate you. But we have to keep on watching you. Because we can't believe what you're doing, that you're bringing this torture upon us!''

 

[Frideswide]

Blunt was even a phoney when it came to his art 'expertise'.*


*...says the twit who has no 0-Levels.

He was? I find him cogent and convincing - especially on Poussin

I've been had.

 

[Frideswide]

Crowley is the basis of Moran and Bremner’s belief that the film is partly about something akin to magic and alchemy. Played by Steven Berkoff,

Inspired casting!

 

[Steven]

He was? I find him cogent and convincing - especially on Poussin

I was guilty of using the view of someone more knowledgeable than me as my own opinion. That person, I now think, simply didn't like Blunt. Or else his opinion was swayed by the revelations about Blunt.

 

[gordonrutter]

He was? I find him cogent and convincing - especially on Poussin

I was guilty of using the view of someone more knowledgeable than me as my own opinion. That person, I now think, simply didn't like Blunt. Or else his opinion was swayed by the revelations about Blunt.

The biographies and career history (ignoring the obvious one) seem to be what one would expect of a knowledgeable individual in their field.

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

The Crowley “Book of Thoth” simply explains the tarot deck he created, the Thoth tarot. If you wish to read with the Thoth tarot, the book helps. Crowley‘s book has nothing to do with the Egyptian god, Thoth.

Yes, I have had both the deck and the book for many years. I'm still none the wiser. It makes no sense to me.

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

Well, Blunt was an art historian (employed by the royal family at one point) and being able to speak another language fluently, greatly helps as well of course - which, especially back then, would only really be the preserve of the upper classes.

(I've got my suspicions about some of the bilingual/multilingual lot on here to be honest)..............

I had a mate at a certain redbrick uni in the 1980s, who was "approached" in her final year. Although she didn't tell anyone at the time, we all found out about it a few years later. She went on to work at GCHQ. She was doing a degree in modern languages and didn't speak a word of Russian but after uni, was put on a course to speed learn it. So it seems, at that time, talented linguists were definitely a target. She wasn't particularly "posh" although our uni was, I guess. She told us her job was boring - she thought she was going to be like James Bond but actually spent most of her days wearing a head-set, listening to broadcasts about potatoes.

 

[Floyd]

I had a mate at a certain redbrick uni in the 1980s, who was "approached" in her final year. Although she didn't tell anyone at the time, we all found out about it a few years later. She went on to work at GCHQ. She was doing a degree in modern languages and didn't speak a word of Russian but after uni, was put on a course to speed learn it. So it seems, at that time, talented linguists were definitely a target. She wasn't particularly "posh" although our uni was, I guess. She told us her job was boring - she thought she was going to be like James Bond but actually spent most of her days wearing a head-set, listening to broadcasts about potatoes.

We have a thread somewhere about members here who have been approached by the spooks.

 

[escargot]

I had a mate at a certain redbrick uni in the 1980s, who was "approached" in her final year. Although she didn't tell anyone at the time, we all found out about it a few years later. She went on to work at GCHQ. She was doing a degree in modern languages and didn't speak a word of Russian but after uni, was put on a course to speed learn it. So it seems, at that time, talented linguists were definitely a target. She wasn't particularly "posh" although our uni was, I guess. She told us her job was boring - she thought she was going to be like James Bond but actually spent most of her days wearing a head-set, listening to broadcasts about potatoes.

Someone I was at university with had a friend who was being vetted for a job like that. I cant remember now if he was approached or applied for the post.
He was throughly vetted as were all his family and friends. As I'd been on nights out with him, Mate and others I half-expected a call too but heard nothing. Gutted.

 

[Mungoman]

My Brother speaks fluent Russian, among other slavic languages, and was head hunted down here at the University of New South Wales, for Cheltenham.

One afternoon I heard a knock on the door and there were two gentleman in coats who spoke in an 'undocumented' English accent who wanted to know If I had a brother. I affirmed that I was and that, basically, was that

The Brother won't say much about it except to say that they required him to do a course in Industrial Russian, and that everything they used was American, and that any intercepted messages were already censored.

He spent 17 years in Australia as a teenager/young man and decided after ten years or so at G.C.H. that he 'didn't suit the office'...something to do with the toffee nosed bastards that the place was over run with.

 

[sherbetbizarre]

Another look at the ruins of the Abbey of Thelema: