Lovely night, isn't it? :\
On this Halloween, I would like to turn your attention to a
man who should be of interest to anyone who dabbles in the paranormal or who
likes the just plain weird. Issues of
time and space prohibit me from giving even the most superficial treatment of
this man so I will be providing links for further information at the end of the
post.
His name was Aleister Crowley. He was an occultist. A
mystic. A philosopher. A hedonist.
A “magician.” A man despised by
his own mother so much that she called him “the Beast.” The name stuck. He was a member of the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn
and supposedly a high-level Freemason, though that latter organization denied
any affiliation. He founded his own
religious philosophy, Thelema and lived by a credo of “Do What Thou Wilt.” Hmm.
Sounds more like he was a pioneering libertarian than a demon “beast,”
but we’ll move on.
His life even left ripples in popular culture. In Dennis Wheatley’s novel, The Devil Rides
Out, the Satanic cult leader is said to be modeled after Crowley. There are Crowley-like figures and even
cameos by the Beast himself in works such as Rosemary’s Baby and From
Hell. The great Ozzy Osbourne even wrote
a song about Crowely, having the unintended effect of further linking Ozzy
falsely to Satanism:
Given these areas of research that he was passionate about
and the fact that he lived out his days in the Victorian era, Crowley was not
without his share of controversy.
British press at one point dubbed him “the wickedest man in the
world.” Allegations of Satanism
surrounded him. Viewed in retrospect,
Crowley has been called a racist, a drug addict, sexist in the extreme, and
really more of a sensationalist and a carnie showman than any sort of
spiritualist. I’ll leave that debate to
others.
What interests me about Crowley is the fact that he claimed to have been in contact with an entity called “Lam.” Crowley claimed to have been working with ceremonial magic (or
“magick” as he called it) in an effort to contact “higher intelligences.” In doing so, he purported to have
encountered Lam, an extradimensional being with gray skin, a large and bald
head, and slit-like eyes. Sound like
anyone discussed around here?
Of course it does.
Lam can and has been easily accounted for as a “Grey” alien by many,
including spiritualists and Crowley followers who claim to have made contact
with Lam themselves. Interestingly
enough, Crowley was neither abducted by nor experimented upon by Lam as so many
others report being by the Greys. Instead,
Lam was a mentor to Crowley, a spiritual guru whose teachings Crowley infused
into his own philosophies.
I have no idea as to the veracity of Crowley’s claims and
really don’t care to get into any kind of tussle over them. There is still more for me to read. Yet given Crowley’s uncanny description of
Lam, I cannot help but wonder if he made alien contact or at the very least, I
wonder what Crowley would have had to say about the entire alien abduction
phenomenon.
So I need to get through the night. Hopefully the trick or treating won’t be so
bad. Wish I had the time and resources
to establish some sort of laser perimeter defense outside the house. Or at the very least, to post an ElmoSapien.
Follow me on Twitter: @Jntweets
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