Great video. I almost spit water out of my nose at the reference to Coil. Took me totally off guard. Huge fan of them, I dont think I've heard them referenced 'in the wild' for fifteen years. 😂
@@ZoavisionMediaI used to hear musicians that I was into reference Coil. Does anyone think Psychick Warriors ov Gaia were influenced by the left hand path.. Swans, Laibach even? Need for Not by Levitatation is inspired by Blake
@@rachelcoisnacoillte6023 thank you! I did not know that! I co-edited a book on industrial music a couple of years ago and, of course, Blake got in there too…
Thank you Jason for your very insightful analysis and comparison of these three important figures. I’m a huge fan of Blake and AOS. I look forward to more videos.
And anyone who would include Blake as a saint cannot, verily, be anything like a "great beast" or "wickedest man alive". In fact, quite the opposite. I think Crowley got up the noses of the religious "authorities," namely the Catholic Church, who wanted him branded and labelled "wickedest", because he let out the genie of personal magic which obviates religious dogma... Did he start any wars, genocides, drop any A-bombs, or even kill one person? Who are the wickedest, then, really? Crowley, Yeats, Blake and Osman would be the first on the anti-war protest lines, so... We've (or, they've) had it all backwards.
I've got a printing of The Divine Comedy with illustrations/plates by William Blake. It was a gift from a professor. It's my favorite book due to the illustrations. As for Crowley, i only possess Diary of a Drug Fiend and Book of Thoth.
Hello. I've just stumbled on your channel and it's a revelation and amazing reflection on all things Blake. I'm curious if you've ever researched and presented a video or essay on Blake's relation to the platonic scholar Thomas Taylor and other contemporaries like Walking Stewart?
Hello! I'm currently writing a script for a video on Blake that, among other things, responds to his interest in Plato. In this particular instance, I'm not looking at Taylor and contemporaries (although Kathleen Raine's Blake and Tradition is on my bookshelf asking me why not and… maybe next time!) Thank you for your kind comment.
A genuine and honest intellectual study of Crowley's life and works would find resonances in the works of Lord Byron, D.H. Lawrence, Bertrand Russell, Oscar Wilde, Aldous Huxley, Isaiah Berlin, Nietzsche, Bulwer Lytton, Terence McKenna and Leni Riefenstahl at the very least.
I treat Crowley with a… degree of levity (not appropriate I’m sure) because I believe him a charlatan rather than truly evil - at least in any “cosmic” sense. In terms of his personal morals, he was extremely exploitative and corrupting. Spare, however, I find genuinely interesting.
Spares earth inferno describes a viewpoint i've seen in other stuff that comes across as a justification to control others and possibly themselves unknowingly to a degree .
While I can be sceptical of some of Crowley's claims, he was *so* far ahead of his time in his understanding of yoga compared to his western contemporaries that he does, indeed, deserve full credit for this.
I've actually just gone back to check the reference (John Symond's citing Crowley's diaries in The Great Beast, p.114). He had been performing augoiedes, summoning the spirits of the dead and acts of magical memory, but the actual statement is actually about conversation with his precursors: "I found myself in the middle of China with a wife and child,’ wrote Crowley. ‘I was no longer influenced by love for them, no longer interested in protecting them as I had been.’ He was lost amid his conversations with the mighty men of antiquity, guar¬ dians of the esoteric tradition. One by one they passed before his impassioned gaze; Pythagoras, Plotinus, Avicenna, Paracelsus, Fludd, William Blake. . . . He heard them all. Every event in his life had been prearranged by them to help him accomplish the Great Work. From these trances he sank back to earth in a cradle of flame." My bad: because he was concerned with theories of reincarnation at the time, I'd applied it to this statement as well which is not true!
@@ZoavisionMediaQuite alright. I'm related to William Blake and have been on a journey looking into him. And when I was going through a religious upheavel and changing my baptist views to be that more of gnosticism, I saw some of his paintings which gave me a strong gnostic vibe. I guess I'm not the only one who thought so I guess Crowely wrote something that made William Blake a saint in OTO if I recall which to me is very interesting.
I'm on the same wagon. I fail to see what exactly people find so alluring and truthful about his magical system when he and other followers of his have led such messed up lives (W B Yates being a very compelling example, and I don't say this out of cruelty; he's my favourite poet). It reminds me a bit of the movie The Witch. There's a whole mystique about the witch, but in one of the very few scenes of the movie she actually shows up she is seen eating hogwash with the animals.
@@he_was_a_skater_dog even is famous ritual to call upon the guardian Angel, it is connected to calling the guardian Angel because that is not how you call your own guardian Angel. He was up to something else. Then the drugs aspect and knowing very well what heroin those to people.. it is not at all a example that i belíeve a magician should follow because it only gets you to connect with very low beings.
Hmm. Wish I could leave a voicemail feedback rather than try to write comments. I despise academic armchair swipes at Crowley when none of you have achieved his level of mountaineering, yoga, study then practice of black magick or traveling. And most miss the point, as a polymath, all art forms and activities are interconnected, hence you can't judge a poem like, for example, At Sea, on poetic merit alone, which, by my paradigm, is a good poem! You're missing the point entirely; it's an utterance, an invocation.. An Auroraboros of looping serpentine energy. The witch is dead! That said, he was also a proper cnt but many artists are / were. Just look at Jamaican dancehall. But that's life, we don't want to meet those heroes do we? And why always lump Crowley with Spare? OK, yes OK I get it but, you can say the same about the train links between Peterborough, London and Spalding ffs.. These three artists were all visionary geniuses and we'd do much better studying their technique deep understanding and commitment to their art than critiquing their errors. I'd expect a debate will not ensue. And I'm no Thelemite but still, gottagive creds. Spare painted some shit, but like Lee Perry, he created an unrivalled legacy of eternal spiritual dimensions, pure Obeah man ting! Thank you for your video it was provoking
As someone who worked through both Crowley’s thelema and also created art using sigils when a member of TOPY, I still think Crowley is old fashioned and Spare genuinely a bit of a genius. The big C was a pretty good mountaineer (although people who know this stuff - not me - say he was too casual about other people’s safety which… sounds right…)
@@ZoavisionMedia as I say it's not about his poetry but that his poetry is apart of a bigger thing. I defend at sea though :) his ode to Pan ain't no Blake but he clearly wasn't claiming to be a painter....
@@ian_occultistah! Sorry - I apologise profusely for my one comment which I’ve deleted - it was rude and that is very wrong of me. I actually, ah, devoted many years of my life to both Spare and Crowley in a (again, uhm) very non-academic sense. While I would claim some professional expertise on C’s/Spare’s use of Blake (C: very shallow, S: much more profound), my opinion on C vs S as old-fashioned vs genuinely groundbreaking is entirely a personal one and with no greater claim to importance than that. I genuinely find C funny, but maybe because he hoodwinked me for a while 😊
All that magic all the devils, drugs and sex, He's still got old and died, Give me someone who's figured out the potion for longevity.And beauty, That's the ***king warlocke I wanna get to know
I tend to agree with you, that's the Holy Grail, Real Magic! Ultimately all the rest seems to be just hot air and mental masturbation, rather like the contents of this video. Didn't learn a single thing, just wasted 19 minutes...
@@Futo653 It's hard to answer those "simple" questions without ending up writing a whole book... Since early childhood I read many esoteric books, but when I reached 35 years old (I'm now 64) I decided to reject everything I'd read and only believe what I had personally experienced. From then on I did have a lot more spontaneous personal experiences. Although some of these were fascinating to me and shifted my view of life and the world, I still can't say that any of it was of true value. There's no one I can share my experiences with without getting into pointless discussions. Of course I had decided to only believe my own experiences, so why should anyone else believe mine? And there's nothing in it for me even if they did believe me, I'm not a prophet, I'm not looking for followers... I will say that Blake is the one I can most relate to.
@@Futo653 That's funny that we're both the same age and I must say that I ended up being very glad that I had studied the bible as my first major experience after going back to square one was that my partner at the time spontaneously started having visions during sex, and much of the time they involved biblical scenes. The interesting thing was that whilst the situation started off the same as the biblical account, the dialogue was quite different and I found that it made more sense than the version that was handed down to us by the council of Nicea... I found myself often repeating the phrase: "spot the deliberate mistake" with regards to the bible. As if some of the writers had a sword to their neck and were being forced to write the version that was approved by the Romans, but managed to subtly slip in deliberate non sequiturs which make you question it and then come to the truth which is there, hidden in plain sight so to speak... Thanks for your responses as it has made me revisit those experiences. Edit: I'm in the UK and it's 02:30am so I'm off to bed.
The Trap every single one of those "enlightened" occultists, aryists and mages fell into is the first temptation the devil gave them: "YOU are God - It's all about you; therefore your will, needs, desires are all in tune with the universe." That self-centric approach leads to only disaster. The meaning of human existence lies solely in the fundamental question: How do we treat each other? Answer: Only with LOVE!
Interesting video. Anyone who would include Blake as a saint cannot, verily, be anything like a "great beast" or "wickedest man alive". In fact, quite the opposite. I think Crowley got up the noses of the religious "authorities," namely the Catholic Church, who wanted him branded and labelled "wickedest", because he let out the genie of personal magic which obviates religious dogma... Did he start any wars, genocides, drop any A-bombs, or even kill one person? Who are the wickedest, then, really? Crowley, Yeats, Blake and Osman would be the first on the anti-war protest lines, so... We've (or, they've) had it all backwards.
Great video. I almost spit water out of my nose at the reference to Coil. Took me totally off guard. Huge fan of them, I dont think I've heard them referenced 'in the wild' for fifteen years. 😂
Ah! I’m a massive Coil fan - I need to do something on their love of Blake some time…
@@ZoavisionMediaI used to hear musicians that I was into reference Coil. Does anyone think Psychick Warriors ov Gaia were influenced by the left hand path.. Swans, Laibach even?
Need for Not by Levitatation is inspired by Blake
@@rachelcoisnacoillte6023 thank you! I did not know that! I co-edited a book on industrial music a couple of years ago and, of course, Blake got in there too…
Thank you Jason for your very insightful analysis and comparison of these three important figures. I’m a huge fan of Blake and AOS. I look forward to more videos.
My pleasure!
Crowley included Blake as a Saint under the name William O Neil in his Gnostic Mass.
And anyone who would include Blake as a saint cannot, verily, be anything like a "great beast" or "wickedest man alive". In fact, quite the opposite. I think Crowley got up the noses of the religious "authorities," namely the Catholic Church, who wanted him branded and labelled "wickedest", because he let out the genie of personal magic which obviates religious dogma... Did he start any wars, genocides, drop any A-bombs, or even kill one person? Who are the wickedest, then, really? Crowley, Yeats, Blake and Osman would be the first on the anti-war protest lines, so... We've (or, they've) had it all backwards.
Not enough TH-cam video essays are made on these three figures. Congratulations
I've got a printing of The Divine Comedy with illustrations/plates by William Blake. It was a gift from a professor. It's my favorite book due to the illustrations.
As for Crowley, i only possess Diary of a Drug Fiend and Book of Thoth.
The illustrations to Dante are fantastic and I’ve always had a soft spot for Lady Frieda Harris's illustrations to Crowley's Thoth tarot.
Great piece, and very interesting links.
The ancient cultures had hallucinogenic substances for the shamen to use occasionally for prophecies, a pretty good way to describe magical thinking.
A channel entirely about Blake? Absolutely subscribing! 😁👍
yes me too within seconds ha ha
@@Theartistfarmer 👍
Most captivating bit I’ve heard in a long time. Great stuff 👍🏼
Hello. I've just stumbled on your channel and it's a revelation and amazing reflection on all things Blake. I'm curious if you've ever researched and presented a video or essay on Blake's relation to the platonic scholar Thomas Taylor and other contemporaries like Walking Stewart?
Hello! I'm currently writing a script for a video on Blake that, among other things, responds to his interest in Plato. In this particular instance, I'm not looking at Taylor and contemporaries (although Kathleen Raine's Blake and Tradition is on my bookshelf asking me why not and… maybe next time!) Thank you for your kind comment.
A genuine and honest intellectual study of Crowley's life and works would find resonances in the works of Lord Byron, D.H. Lawrence, Bertrand Russell, Oscar Wilde, Aldous Huxley, Isaiah Berlin, Nietzsche, Bulwer Lytton, Terence McKenna and Leni Riefenstahl at the very least.
and super grover
Martin Booth's A Magick Life is a great biography of Crowley, more recently Phil Baker's City of The Beast is a fascinating entry.
Crowley is perhaps the most famous poseur there is. If this comment triggers you then congratulations: his troll endures.
toodles.
Thisxis SO interesting,and VERY brave .Thank you,
Thanks for sharing your insight; although I find the darkest truth to be the willful corruption of humanity to be distasteful!
I treat Crowley with a… degree of levity (not appropriate I’m sure) because I believe him a charlatan rather than truly evil - at least in any “cosmic” sense. In terms of his personal morals, he was extremely exploitative and corrupting. Spare, however, I find genuinely interesting.
I enjoyed this.
Enjoyed this ❤📚
Very well presented! New sub! Cheers
Class.
Wonderful!! I have some info on Blake you may enjoy.😀
Excellent!
Spares earth inferno describes a viewpoint i've seen in other stuff that comes across as a justification to control others and possibly themselves unknowingly to a degree .
Awesome video and narration.
Excellent presentation with excellent visuals, thank you so much for sharing .
Great video, very well composed. Will follow for sure
Most people that take the left handed path only end up walking in circles.
mum must think ye so clever
Indeed. I've been there myself and now watch it from the outside from online occult "communities"
@@inf0tr8r Wow, performative cruelty!
You found something anyone can do. 🤣
"The wicked envy and hate.
It is their way of admiring."
- Victor Hugo
Long Live the Ancient Dreams!
Is it true that Savile lived in Crowleys house in Scotland?
I don’t know about Savile, but Jimmy Page bought Boleskine House in the 70s.
No, he didn't.
The job of the artist is to break your heart.
Nobody can tell you what you are here to tell the world.
William Blake was a painter that wrote essays. A lodges schizophrenic, as most those times. You propably are talking about William Blake II?
Read Magick without tears for most honest Crowley or mayhap Eight lectures on Yoga
While I can be sceptical of some of Crowley's claims, he was *so* far ahead of his time in his understanding of yoga compared to his western contemporaries that he does, indeed, deserve full credit for this.
Did you say Crowley thought he was william blake in a past life?
I've actually just gone back to check the reference (John Symond's citing Crowley's diaries in The Great Beast, p.114). He had been performing augoiedes, summoning the spirits of the dead and acts of magical memory, but the actual statement is actually about conversation with his precursors: "I found myself in the middle of China with a wife and child,’ wrote Crowley. ‘I was no longer influenced by love for them, no longer interested in protecting them as I had been.’ He was lost amid his conversations with the mighty men of antiquity, guar¬ dians of the esoteric tradition. One by one they passed before his impassioned gaze; Pythagoras, Plotinus, Avicenna, Paracelsus, Fludd, William Blake. . . . He heard them all. Every event in his life had been prearranged by them to help him accomplish the Great Work. From these trances he sank back to earth in a cradle of flame." My bad: because he was concerned with theories of reincarnation at the time, I'd applied it to this statement as well which is not true!
@@ZoavisionMediaQuite alright. I'm related to William Blake and have been on a journey looking into him. And when I was going through a religious upheavel and changing my baptist views to be that more of gnosticism, I saw some of his paintings which gave me a strong gnostic vibe. I guess I'm not the only one who thought so I guess Crowely wrote something that made William Blake a saint in OTO if I recall which to me is very interesting.
What about Sacrificing Little Innocent Intelligent Boys ???
Reference to masturbAt10n all too often misunderstood
@@ian_occultistCAME here for that.
Haha - I kept well away from that for family-friendly TH-cam
@@ian_occultist you really are giving him the benefit of the doubt???
Actually, picking the Spare illustrations was a nightmare. “Nope, can’t use that. Damn! What is that in the background?”
I struggle a lot on understanding "Crowley" "importance.." to me he was show off and cover up is dark arts marriage.
I'm on the same wagon. I fail to see what exactly people find so alluring and truthful about his magical system when he and other followers of his have led such messed up lives (W B Yates being a very compelling example, and I don't say this out of cruelty; he's my favourite poet). It reminds me a bit of the movie The Witch. There's a whole mystique about the witch, but in one of the very few scenes of the movie she actually shows up she is seen eating hogwash with the animals.
@@he_was_a_skater_dog even is famous ritual to call upon the guardian Angel, it is connected to calling the guardian Angel because that is not how you call your own guardian Angel. He was up to something else. Then the drugs aspect and knowing very well what heroin those to people.. it is not at all a example that i belíeve a magician should follow because it only gets you to connect with very low beings.
What about PETER CUSHING & CHRISTOPHER LEE ???
I so wish. I met Cushing in my 20s and treasure the experience, and I’d have loved to have met the great Christopher Lee…
@@ZoavisionMedia I’m watching (Horror of) DRACULA (1958) right now on DVD 📀 Video!!!
Hmm. Wish I could leave a voicemail feedback rather than try to write comments. I despise academic armchair swipes at Crowley when none of you have achieved his level of mountaineering, yoga, study then practice of black magick or traveling. And most miss the point, as a polymath, all art forms and activities are interconnected, hence you can't judge a poem like, for example, At Sea, on poetic merit alone, which, by my paradigm, is a good poem! You're missing the point entirely; it's an utterance, an invocation.. An Auroraboros of looping serpentine energy. The witch is dead! That said, he was also a proper cnt but many artists are / were. Just look at Jamaican dancehall. But that's life, we don't want to meet those heroes do we? And why always lump Crowley with Spare? OK, yes OK I get it but, you can say the same about the train links between Peterborough, London and Spalding ffs.. These three artists were all visionary geniuses and we'd do much better studying their technique deep understanding and commitment to their art than critiquing their errors. I'd expect a debate will not ensue. And I'm no Thelemite but still, gottagive creds. Spare painted some shit, but like Lee Perry, he created an unrivalled legacy of eternal spiritual dimensions, pure Obeah man ting! Thank you for your video it was provoking
As someone who worked through both Crowley’s thelema and also created art using sigils when a member of TOPY, I still think Crowley is old fashioned and Spare genuinely a bit of a genius. The big C was a pretty good mountaineer (although people who know this stuff - not me - say he was too casual about other people’s safety which… sounds right…)
@@ZoavisionMedia sorry I'm still editing my comment!!
@@ZoavisionMedia as I say it's not about his poetry but that his poetry is apart of a bigger thing. I defend at sea though :) his ode to Pan ain't no Blake but he clearly wasn't claiming to be a painter....
@@ZoavisionMedia ah so you were in the Porridge club, gud on ye! Do you have some blogs out there on this period!?, would be interested
@@ian_occultistah! Sorry - I apologise profusely for my one comment which I’ve deleted - it was rude and that is very wrong of me. I actually, ah, devoted many years of my life to both Spare and Crowley in a (again, uhm) very non-academic sense. While I would claim some professional expertise on C’s/Spare’s use of Blake (C: very shallow, S: much more profound), my opinion on C vs S as old-fashioned vs genuinely groundbreaking is entirely a personal one and with no greater claim to importance than that. I genuinely find C funny, but maybe because he hoodwinked me for a while 😊
All that magic all the devils, drugs and sex, He's still got old and died, Give me someone who's figured out the potion for longevity.And beauty, That's the ***king warlocke I wanna get to know
Perhaps Mick Jagger?
Why?
I tend to agree with you, that's the Holy Grail, Real Magic! Ultimately all the rest seems to be just hot air and mental masturbation, rather like the contents of this video. Didn't learn a single thing, just wasted 19 minutes...
@@Futo653 It's hard to answer those "simple" questions without ending up writing a whole book... Since early childhood I read many esoteric books, but when I reached 35 years old (I'm now 64) I decided to reject everything I'd read and only believe what I had personally experienced. From then on I did have a lot more spontaneous personal experiences. Although some of these were fascinating to me and shifted my view of life and the world, I still can't say that any of it was of true value. There's no one I can share my experiences with without getting into pointless discussions. Of course I had decided to only believe my own experiences, so why should anyone else believe mine? And there's nothing in it for me even if they did believe me, I'm not a prophet, I'm not looking for followers... I will say that Blake is the one I can most relate to.
@@Futo653 That's funny that we're both the same age and I must say that I ended up being very glad that I had studied the bible as my first major experience after going back to square one was that my partner at the time spontaneously started having visions during sex, and much of the time they involved biblical scenes. The interesting thing was that whilst the situation started off the same as the biblical account, the dialogue was quite different and I found that it made more sense than the version that was handed down to us by the council of Nicea... I found myself often repeating the phrase: "spot the deliberate mistake" with regards to the bible. As if some of the writers had a sword to their neck and were being forced to write the version that was approved by the Romans, but managed to subtly slip in deliberate non sequiturs which make you question it and then come to the truth which is there, hidden in plain sight so to speak...
Thanks for your responses as it has made me revisit those experiences.
Edit: I'm in the UK and it's 02:30am so I'm off to bed.
Thank you for a great piece.
Wlliam Flat Earth Blake!!
The Trap every single one of those "enlightened" occultists, aryists and mages fell into is the first temptation the devil gave them: "YOU are God - It's all about you; therefore your will, needs, desires are all in tune with the universe."
That self-centric approach leads to only disaster.
The meaning of human existence lies solely in the fundamental question: How do we treat each other?
Answer: Only with LOVE!
And that begins with love of The Self. Love is the law, love under will.
Wonderful!
It would take a billion yugas
Wrong, so wrong
Interesting video. Anyone who would include Blake as a saint cannot, verily, be anything like a "great beast" or "wickedest man alive". In fact, quite the opposite. I think Crowley got up the noses of the religious "authorities," namely the Catholic Church, who wanted him branded and labelled "wickedest", because he let out the genie of personal magic which obviates religious dogma... Did he start any wars, genocides, drop any A-bombs, or even kill one person? Who are the wickedest, then, really? Crowley, Yeats, Blake and Osman would be the first on the anti-war protest lines, so... We've (or, they've) had it all backwards.
I believe Crowley did shoot at least one person
Got two hands