Abbey of Thelema
| Abbey of Thelema is a building in Cefalu Sicily used from 1920 by Aleister Crowley and Leah Hirsig as a temple of his 'Do What Thou Wilt' philosophy of Thelema (meaning 'True Will'). AC is the archetype of the AntiChrist, Saturn 666 the Beast of the Book of Revelation. They performed rites of Eleusinian Mysteries (abduction of Persephone). The main ritual room was called the Chamber of Nightmares by Crowley. |  |
Crowley was a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn of Samuel MacGregor Mathers. The club of occultists and masons was linked to the Society of Psychical Research with members like Everard Fielding, his later supervisor. Like Cecil agent John Dee, they were secret agents who used occultism as cover, an eccentric image of provocateur, to create a mysterious and iconic image.
Thelema celebrates decadence with as only law Do What Thou Willt and restriction as only sin. It contains elements of Taoism. The Abbey of Thelema is a concept of François Rabelais (d 4/9 like Leah Hirsig) who wrote Guargantia and Pantagruel about two giants living in the Abbey of Thelema. The phrase 'Do What Thou Willt' was used in the Hellfire Club.
In 1906 modernist Albert Gleizes had founded the Abbey of Créteil in France, also based on François Rabelais' Abbey of Thelema, and helped creating cubism, promoted by Léonce Rosenberg.
In 1921 Mary Butts (lesbian agenda), who was related to William Blake's patron Thomas Butts, also worked on Book 4, visited the Abbey. She published in The Little Review (program Modernism) of Jane Heap (student of George Gurdjieff) with Ezra Pound, TS Eliot, Emma Goldman, Marcel Duchamp, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, André Breton, Gertrude Stein,..
Raoul Loveday supposedly died in 1923 from typhoid at the Abbey.
His 'Diary of a Drug Friend' (Crowley was a user of heroin) was a blueprint for the CIA counterculture of hedonistic rock 'n' roll icons (William Burroughs, Jim Morrison, Hunter Thompson, Sid Vicious, Kurt Cobain), the founding of the Left Wing Church.
In magic rituals Thelemites summon the 4 gods Babalon, Nuit, Hadit and Therion in a magic circle, instead of the 4 elements and 4 Archangels (4 letter word for God YHVH).
According to legend, he performs sodomy sex magick rituals with Victor Neuburg in in 1909 the desert of Algeria, using the 30 Aethyrs of John Dee's Enochian system described in the Vision and the Voice. The Vision and the Voice is the second most important text in Thelema, an account of crossing the Abyss (term in kabbalism).
The most important tasks in Thelema are: formation of magical being or Body of Light, knowledge and conversation with the Holy Guardian Angel (in Crowley's case Aiwass). The holy guardian angel, higher will/true will, compared to the Atman in Hinduism, daemon in Gnosticism is an inversion of Tiferet the heart, the soul. The ritual to find the HGA is based on the ritual of Abramelin the Magi, that Crowley performed in the Boleskine house, which became a holy place in his religion. This 'angel' makes him aware of his True Will (Thelema) and assists him in crossing the abyss, crossing Da'ath in the dark night of the soul, night of Pan (procedure of six months Crowley described in liber Samekh and the 8th aethyr). Thelemites try to achieve Ego death through sex magic.
As a modern prophet of the sodomy religion of the Templars and Cathars, he interpreted the pineal gland, the Eye of Horus as the anus, promotes Luciferian illumination through sodomy. His famous horns of Pan (=Saturn) pose represents a symbol in NOX evocation (forces of darkness), where the arms represent the legs and buttcheecks.
Crowley and Hirsig met with Eugen Grosche in Thuringia who later founded the Fraternitas Saturni with Albin Grau.
Jane Wolfe, an actress of Paramount Pictures, was trained at the Abbey in yoga. She formed a Thelemic community in California with Wilfred Talbot Smith, which later became the Agape Lodge in Pasadena with Phyllis Seckler. Jack Parsons led the OTO Agape Lodge in Pasadena from 1942.
Crowley initiated Kenneth Grant and made him his secretary.
JFC Fuller, member of Crowley's A.A., joined Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists.
Kenneth Anger (friend of Bobby Beausoleil of the Manson Family) and Alfred Kinsey (Institute for Sex Research) visited Crowley's abbey in Sicily in 1955. Parson's JPL became NASA.
The Beatles put Crowley on the cover of their Sgt Pepper's album and released Abbey Road in 1969.
Thelma and Louise with Geena Davis, Susan Sarandon and Brad Pitt contained Thelema symbolism of following the True Will. The women in Baywatch were called Babes (Thelemite term Babe in the Abyss).
Artist Joachim Koester used photographs of the Abbey in his work Morning of the Magicians (like the book about Vril Society).