Walk Like an Egyptian: Egypt as Authority in Aleister Crowley’s Reception of The Book of the Law
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pome.v12i1.20Keywords:
Aleister Crowley, Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, EgyptAbstract
This article investigates the story of Aleister Crowley’s reception of The Book of the Law in Cairo, Egypt, in 1904, focusing on the question of why it occurred in Egypt. The article contends that Crowley created this foundation narrative, which involved specifically incorporating an Egyptian antiquity from a museum, the “Stèle of Revealing,’” in Egypt because he was working within a conceptual structure that privileged Egypt as a source of Hermetic authority. The article explores Crowley’s synthesis of the romantic and scholarly constructions of Egypt, inherited from the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as well as the uses that two prominent members of the Order made of Egyptological collections within museums. The article concludes that these provided Crowley with both a conceptual structure within which to legitimise his reformation of Golden Dawn ritual and cosmology, and a model of how to do so.References
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Apuleius. The Golden Ass. Translated by Joel C. Relihan. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2007.
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Bogdan, Henrik. Western Esotericism and Rituals of Initiation. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007.
Bohrer, Frederick N. Orientalism and Visual Culture: Imagining Mesopotamia in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Booth, Martin. A Magick Life: A Biography of Aleister Crowley. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2000.
Brewer, Douglas J. and Emily Teeter. Egypt and the Egyptians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed. 2007.
Budge, Ernest A. Wallis. A Guide to the First and Second Egyptian Rooms. Predynastic Antiquities, Mummies, Mummy-Cases, and Other Objects Connected with the Funeral Rites of the Ancient Egyptians. London: British Museum Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, 1898.
———. The Book of the Dead. New York: Gramercy Books, 1895, 1960.
Chappell, Lita Luise. The Pilgrimage. http://www.ockham-sound.com/goldenlotusoto/archives/20.
Colquhoun, Ithell. The Sword of Wisdom: Macgregor Mathers and the Golden Dawn. New York: Putnam, 1975.
Crowley , Aleister. The Equinox of the Gods. Rev. ed. Scottsdale: New Falcon Publications, 1991 [1936]..
———. Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law. Montreal: 93 Publishing, 1974.
———. The Book of the Law. Montreal: 93 Publishing, 1975.
———. The Holy Books of Thelema. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Wesier, 1983.
———; Victor Neuburg and Mary Desti. The Vision and the Voice. York Beach, Maine: Weiser, 1998.
———; Mary Desti, and Leila Waddell. Edited by Hymenaeus Beta. Magick Liber ABA: Book Four, Parts I-IV. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 2000.
Curl, James Stevens. The Egyptian Revival: Ancient Egypt as the Inspiration for Design Motifs in the West. London: Routledge, 2005.
Dawson, Warren R., and P.H.K. Gray. Catalogue of Egyptian Antiquities in the British Museum. I: Mummies and Human Remains. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1968.
——— and Eric P. Uphill. Who Was Who In Egyptology. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1972.
Ebeling, Florian. The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007.
Etienne, Marc. Journey to the Afterlife: Egyptian Antiquities from the Louvre. Sydney: Art Exhibitions Australia Limited, 2006.
Farr, Florence and Olivia Shakespear. The Beloved of Hathor and The Shrine of the Golden Hawk. (n.p., n.d).
———. Egyptian Magic. Wellingborough: The Aquarian Press. 1896, 1982.
Faulkner, Raymond O., trans. The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. Edited by Carol Andrews. New York: Macmillan, 1985.
Gaucher, Andre. “Isis a Montmartre.” L’Echo du Merveilleuax (1900): 446–9.
Gilbert, Robert A. The Golden Dawn Scrapbook. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1997.
Gordon, Cyrus H. Forgotten Scripts: Their Ongoing Discovery and Decipherment. New York: Basic Books, 1982.
Greer, Mary Katherine. Women of the Golden Dawn: Rebels and Priestesses. Rochester: Park Street Press, 1995.
Griffiths, John Gwyn, trans. Plutarch’s De Iside Et Osiride. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1970.
Harper, George Mills. Yeats’s Golden Dawn. London: Macmillan Press, 1974.
Harten, Stuart. “Rediscovering Ancient Egypt: Bonaparte’s Expedition and the Colonial Ideology of the French Revolution.” In Napoleon in Egypt, edited by Irene A. Bierman, 33–46. Reading: Ithaca Press, 2003.
Hitchcock, Louise A. Theory for Classics: A Student’s Guide. Oxford: Routledge, 2008.
Hornung, Erik and David Lorton. Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999.
———. The Secret Lore of Egypt: Its Impact on the West. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.
Hutton, Ronald. The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Irwin, Robert. For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies. London: Penguin, 2006.
Jordan, Paul. “Esoteric Egypt.” In Archaeological Fantasies, edited by Garrett G. Fagan, 109–28. Oxford: Routledge, 2006.
Kaczynski, Richard. Perdurabo. Tempe, Ariz.: New Falcon Publications, 2002.
Kitchen, K. A. The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100-650 B.C.). Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1973.
Lees, Frederic. “Isis Worship in Paris: Conversations with the Hierophant Rameses and the High Priestess Anari.” The Humanitarian 16, no. 2 (1900): 82–87.
Lefkowitz, Mary. Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. New York: Basic Books, 1997.
Lehrich, Christopher I. The Occult Mind: Magic in Theory and Practice. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007.
McDermott, Bridget. Death in Ancient Egypt. Stroud: Sutton, 2006.
McLeod, Colin. “The Secret Temple.” Lashtal. http://www.lashtal.com/nuke/.
Montserrat, Dominic. “Unidentified Human Remains: Mummies and the erotics of biography.” In Changing Bodies, Changing Meanings: Studies on the Human Body in Antiquity, edited by Domenic Montserrat, 162–97. London: Routledge, 1998.
Moser, Stephanie. Wondrous Curiosities: Ancient Egypt at the British Museum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Owen, Alex. The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Pasi, Marco. “The Neverendingly Told Story: Recent Biographies of Aleister Crowley.” Aries 3, no. 2 (2003): 224–45.
Putnam, James. Mummy. London: Dorling Kindersley, 1993.
Regardie, Israel. The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic. Scottsdale: New Falcon Publications, 1990.
———. The Eye in the Triangle: An Interpretation of Aleister Crowley. St. Paul: Llewellyn, 1970.
Robb, John. “Agency.” In Archaeology: The Key Concepts, edited by Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn, 3–7. Oxford: Routledge, 2005.
Ruggiu, Jean-Pascal, and Nicolas Tereshchenko. “Introduction Historique du Temple Ahathoor N° 7 de Paris.” http://www.golden-dawn.com/eu/displaycontent. aspx?pageid=109-historique-du-temple.
Starr, Martin P. “Chaos from Order: Cohesion and Conflict in the Post-Crowley Occult Continuum.” The Pomegranate 8, no. 1 (2001): 84–117.
Suster, Gerald. The Legacy of the Beast: The Life, Work an Influence of Aleister Crowley. London: W H Allen, 1988.
Sutin, Lawrence. Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley. New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000.
Symonds, John and Grant, Kenneth, eds. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969.
———. The Great Beast: The Life and Magick of Aleister Crowley. London: Macdonald, 1971.
———. The King of the Shadow Realm. Aleister Crowley: His Life and Magic. London: Duckworth, 1989.
The Invisible Basilica. “Liber XV: The Gnostic Mass: Annotations and Commentary by Helena and Tau Apiryon.” http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/gmnotes. htm.
Tiradritti, Francesco. “The History of the Egyptian Museum.” In Egyptian Treasures from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, edited by Francesco Tiradritti, 12–23. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999.
Toomey, Deirdre,ed. Yeats and Women. Houndmills: Macmillan Press, 2nd ed. 1997.
Tully, Caroline. “Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Isis.” In Ten Years of Triumph of the Moon, edited by Dave Evans and Dave Green, 62–74. Harpenden: Hidden Publishing, 2009.
———. “Florence and the Mummy.” In Women’s Voices in Magic, edited by Brandy Williams, 15–23. Stafford: Megalithica Books, 2009.
Vittmann, G. Priester unde Beamte in Theben der Spätzeit/ Vienna: n.p., 1978.
Webb, James. The Occult Underground. LaSalle: Illinois: Open Court, 1974.
Whistler, H.E. “Ancient Egyptian Kerchiefs.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. 11, no. 11 (1916): 240–1.
Wilkinson, Richard H. The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. London: Thames and Hudson, 2003.
Wilson, David. The British Museum: A History. London: British Museum Press, 2002.
Wilson, Penelope. Hieroglyphs: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Woolley, Benjamin. The Queen’s Conjuror: The Science and Magic of Dr Dee. Hammersmith: HarperCollins, 2001.
Wortham, John David. The Genesis of British Egyptology 1549-1906. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971.
Yeats, William Butler. The Speckled Bird. Edited by William H. O’Donnell. Toronto: McClelland and Steward, 1976.
Zayed, Abed el Hamid. “Painted Wooden Stelae in the Cairo Museum.” Revue d’égyptologie. 20 (1968): 151–2.
Apiryon, Tau. “The Kiblah.” http://hermetic.com/sabazius/kiblah.htm.
Apuleius. The Golden Ass. Translated by Joel C. Relihan. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2007.
Asprem, Egil. “Magic Naturalized? Negotiating Science and Occult Experience in Aleister Crowley’s Scientific Illuminism.” Aries 8 (2008): 139–165.
Assmann, Jan. Foreword to The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus, by Florian Ebeling, vi–xiii. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007.
Bogdan, Henrik. Western Esotericism and Rituals of Initiation. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007.
Bohrer, Frederick N. Orientalism and Visual Culture: Imagining Mesopotamia in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Booth, Martin. A Magick Life: A Biography of Aleister Crowley. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2000.
Brewer, Douglas J. and Emily Teeter. Egypt and the Egyptians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed. 2007.
Budge, Ernest A. Wallis. A Guide to the First and Second Egyptian Rooms. Predynastic Antiquities, Mummies, Mummy-Cases, and Other Objects Connected with the Funeral Rites of the Ancient Egyptians. London: British Museum Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, 1898.
———. The Book of the Dead. New York: Gramercy Books, 1895, 1960.
Chappell, Lita Luise. The Pilgrimage. http://www.ockham-sound.com/goldenlotusoto/archives/20.
Colquhoun, Ithell. The Sword of Wisdom: Macgregor Mathers and the Golden Dawn. New York: Putnam, 1975.
Crowley , Aleister. The Equinox of the Gods. Rev. ed. Scottsdale: New Falcon Publications, 1991 [1936]..
———. Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law. Montreal: 93 Publishing, 1974.
———. The Book of the Law. Montreal: 93 Publishing, 1975.
———. The Holy Books of Thelema. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Wesier, 1983.
———; Victor Neuburg and Mary Desti. The Vision and the Voice. York Beach, Maine: Weiser, 1998.
———; Mary Desti, and Leila Waddell. Edited by Hymenaeus Beta. Magick Liber ABA: Book Four, Parts I-IV. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 2000.
Curl, James Stevens. The Egyptian Revival: Ancient Egypt as the Inspiration for Design Motifs in the West. London: Routledge, 2005.
Dawson, Warren R., and P.H.K. Gray. Catalogue of Egyptian Antiquities in the British Museum. I: Mummies and Human Remains. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1968.
——— and Eric P. Uphill. Who Was Who In Egyptology. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1972.
Ebeling, Florian. The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007.
Etienne, Marc. Journey to the Afterlife: Egyptian Antiquities from the Louvre. Sydney: Art Exhibitions Australia Limited, 2006.
Farr, Florence and Olivia Shakespear. The Beloved of Hathor and The Shrine of the Golden Hawk. (n.p., n.d).
———. Egyptian Magic. Wellingborough: The Aquarian Press. 1896, 1982.
Faulkner, Raymond O., trans. The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead. Edited by Carol Andrews. New York: Macmillan, 1985.
Gaucher, Andre. “Isis a Montmartre.” L’Echo du Merveilleuax (1900): 446–9.
Gilbert, Robert A. The Golden Dawn Scrapbook. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1997.
Gordon, Cyrus H. Forgotten Scripts: Their Ongoing Discovery and Decipherment. New York: Basic Books, 1982.
Greer, Mary Katherine. Women of the Golden Dawn: Rebels and Priestesses. Rochester: Park Street Press, 1995.
Griffiths, John Gwyn, trans. Plutarch’s De Iside Et Osiride. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1970.
Harper, George Mills. Yeats’s Golden Dawn. London: Macmillan Press, 1974.
Harten, Stuart. “Rediscovering Ancient Egypt: Bonaparte’s Expedition and the Colonial Ideology of the French Revolution.” In Napoleon in Egypt, edited by Irene A. Bierman, 33–46. Reading: Ithaca Press, 2003.
Hitchcock, Louise A. Theory for Classics: A Student’s Guide. Oxford: Routledge, 2008.
Hornung, Erik and David Lorton. Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999.
———. The Secret Lore of Egypt: Its Impact on the West. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.
Hutton, Ronald. The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Irwin, Robert. For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies. London: Penguin, 2006.
Jordan, Paul. “Esoteric Egypt.” In Archaeological Fantasies, edited by Garrett G. Fagan, 109–28. Oxford: Routledge, 2006.
Kaczynski, Richard. Perdurabo. Tempe, Ariz.: New Falcon Publications, 2002.
Kitchen, K. A. The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt (1100-650 B.C.). Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1973.
Lees, Frederic. “Isis Worship in Paris: Conversations with the Hierophant Rameses and the High Priestess Anari.” The Humanitarian 16, no. 2 (1900): 82–87.
Lefkowitz, Mary. Not Out of Africa: How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History. New York: Basic Books, 1997.
Lehrich, Christopher I. The Occult Mind: Magic in Theory and Practice. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007.
McDermott, Bridget. Death in Ancient Egypt. Stroud: Sutton, 2006.
McLeod, Colin. “The Secret Temple.” Lashtal. http://www.lashtal.com/nuke/.
Montserrat, Dominic. “Unidentified Human Remains: Mummies and the erotics of biography.” In Changing Bodies, Changing Meanings: Studies on the Human Body in Antiquity, edited by Domenic Montserrat, 162–97. London: Routledge, 1998.
Moser, Stephanie. Wondrous Curiosities: Ancient Egypt at the British Museum. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Owen, Alex. The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Pasi, Marco. “The Neverendingly Told Story: Recent Biographies of Aleister Crowley.” Aries 3, no. 2 (2003): 224–45.
Putnam, James. Mummy. London: Dorling Kindersley, 1993.
Regardie, Israel. The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic. Scottsdale: New Falcon Publications, 1990.
———. The Eye in the Triangle: An Interpretation of Aleister Crowley. St. Paul: Llewellyn, 1970.
Robb, John. “Agency.” In Archaeology: The Key Concepts, edited by Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn, 3–7. Oxford: Routledge, 2005.
Ruggiu, Jean-Pascal, and Nicolas Tereshchenko. “Introduction Historique du Temple Ahathoor N° 7 de Paris.” http://www.golden-dawn.com/eu/displaycontent. aspx?pageid=109-historique-du-temple.
Starr, Martin P. “Chaos from Order: Cohesion and Conflict in the Post-Crowley Occult Continuum.” The Pomegranate 8, no. 1 (2001): 84–117.
Suster, Gerald. The Legacy of the Beast: The Life, Work an Influence of Aleister Crowley. London: W H Allen, 1988.
Sutin, Lawrence. Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley. New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000.
Symonds, John and Grant, Kenneth, eds. The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969.
———. The Great Beast: The Life and Magick of Aleister Crowley. London: Macdonald, 1971.
———. The King of the Shadow Realm. Aleister Crowley: His Life and Magic. London: Duckworth, 1989.
The Invisible Basilica. “Liber XV: The Gnostic Mass: Annotations and Commentary by Helena and Tau Apiryon.” http://www.hermetic.com/sabazius/gmnotes. htm.
Tiradritti, Francesco. “The History of the Egyptian Museum.” In Egyptian Treasures from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, edited by Francesco Tiradritti, 12–23. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999.
Toomey, Deirdre,ed. Yeats and Women. Houndmills: Macmillan Press, 2nd ed. 1997.
Tully, Caroline. “Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and Isis.” In Ten Years of Triumph of the Moon, edited by Dave Evans and Dave Green, 62–74. Harpenden: Hidden Publishing, 2009.
———. “Florence and the Mummy.” In Women’s Voices in Magic, edited by Brandy Williams, 15–23. Stafford: Megalithica Books, 2009.
Vittmann, G. Priester unde Beamte in Theben der Spätzeit/ Vienna: n.p., 1978.
Webb, James. The Occult Underground. LaSalle: Illinois: Open Court, 1974.
Whistler, H.E. “Ancient Egyptian Kerchiefs.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. 11, no. 11 (1916): 240–1.
Wilkinson, Richard H. The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. London: Thames and Hudson, 2003.
Wilson, David. The British Museum: A History. London: British Museum Press, 2002.
Wilson, Penelope. Hieroglyphs: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Woolley, Benjamin. The Queen’s Conjuror: The Science and Magic of Dr Dee. Hammersmith: HarperCollins, 2001.
Wortham, John David. The Genesis of British Egyptology 1549-1906. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971.
Yeats, William Butler. The Speckled Bird. Edited by William H. O’Donnell. Toronto: McClelland and Steward, 1976.
Zayed, Abed el Hamid. “Painted Wooden Stelae in the Cairo Museum.” Revue d’égyptologie. 20 (1968): 151–2.
Published
2011-01-11
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Tully, C. (2011). Walk Like an Egyptian: Egypt as Authority in Aleister Crowley’s Reception of The Book of the Law. Pomegranate, 12(1), 20-47. https://doi.org/10.1558/pome.v12i1.20
