Building a better Beast-The Brotherhood of Aleister Crowley and Huston Smith

“The Gentiles (who are designated Esau or Edom), however, will suffer the opposite fate. They received their light in this world at a single stroke, but it will depart from them gradually until Israel (Cabbala) shall grow strong and destroy them. And when the spirit of uncleanliness shall pass from the world and the divine light shall shine upon Israel without let or hinderance, all things will return to their proper order–to the state of perfection which prevailed in the Garden of Eden before Adam sinned.The worlds will all be joined one to another and nothing will separate Creator from creature. All will rise upward by ascents of the spirit, and creatures will be purified until they behold the Shekhinah”eye to eye””.- The Messianic Idea in Kabbalism Gershom Scholem

 One might consider it odd and some blasphemous to speak of brotherhood between one, a national disgrace and another that is a national religious treasure.

In truth I think one of the few that may not is Huston Smith.

A common and close friend to both men was Ananda Coomaraswamy. “He was described by Heinrich Zimmer as “That noble scholar upon whose shoulders we are still standing”. While serving as a curator to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the latter part of his life, he devoted his work to the explication of traditional metaphysics and symbolism. His writings of this period are filled with references to Plato, Plotinus, Clement, Philo, Augustine, Aquinas, Shankara, Eckhart, and other Rhinish and Asian mystics. He was responsible for creating the collections of oriental art for the Freer Museum, Washington D.C., aswell as for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. When asked what he was, foremostly Dr. Coomaraswamy referred to himself as a Metaphysician, referring here to the concept of perennial philosophy, or Sophia Perennis.

Along with Rene Guenon and Frithjof Schuon, Coomaraswamy is regarded as one of the three founders of Perennialism, also called the Traditionalist School. Several articles by Coomaraswamy on the subject of Hinduism and the Perennial Philosophy were published posthumously in the quarterly journal, Studies in Comparative Religion, alongside articles by Schuon and Guenon (among others).

Although he agrees with Guenon on the universal principles, his works are very different in form from Guenon’s. By vocation, he was a scholar, who dedicated the last decades of his life to searching the Scriptures. Although born in the Hindu tradition, he had a deep knowledge of the Western tradition as
well as a great expertise and love for Greek metaphysics, especially that of Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism”.447447 Wikipedia

In his writings he demonstrated the unity of the Vedanta and Platonism. What would such a serious scholar have to do with a man who is known the world over as a Satanist and drug addict? I will show that Aleister Crowley was actually working for the “return to Paradise” and according to the religion
Coomaraswamy and Huston Smith understood, it was acceptable and appropriate.

According to Mark Sedgwick in an article on Crowley both men knew each other well prior to 1914. In 1916 according to Crowley, Coomaraswamy approached him in New York to help get his wife’s (Alice Richardson) singing career off the ground. Crowley wrote reviews in Vanity Fair to that end.

Crowley and Richardson began an affair which according to Crowley was with her husband’s approval. Crowley also relates he introduced Coomaraswamy to Gerda Maria von Kothek, a German prostitute who he was performing sex magic with. She reportedly moved in with Coomaraswamy for a time.

Coomaraswamy recalled his wife to England and according to Crowley she miscarried Crowley’s baby during the voyage.

This was the last time they spoke.

Why go into such things? Aleister Crowley needs to be put in perspective.

Crowley had not neglected his magical activities in America; During his affair with Ratan Devi( Alice Richardson) he assumed the exalted Grade of Magus. He was then ready to proclaim his word, thelema, or do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law, which is suppose to usher in the New Aeon of Liberty. At the end of the First World War, Crowley briefly returned to England before travelling to Sicily with several new mistresses. At Cefalu he rented a villa,
consecrated a temple to the New Aeon in one of the rooms and painted on the front door DO WHAT THOU WILT. –“The riddle that was Crowley”- Richard Boyle

 What actually clouds the issue of Crowley is language. Is it black or is it ebony? Is it Cabala or Cabbala or Kabbala or Qabalah, or magick?

“Dimont says of Eva (Frank),She preserved the dues-paying membership of Frankism by combining the scholasticism ofthe Zohar with the mysteries of her bedroom into a lucrative religion which enabled her to livein the grand style of her father. The Kabbala had not taught her how to retain her youth, however, and her membership dwindled as her middle-age spread increased.” 448 448 TO ELIMINATE THE OPIATE Volume 1 (1974)BY RABBI MARVIN S. ANTELMAN 449 Richard Kaczynski, Perdurabo, Lawrence Sutin, Do What Thou Wilt, Crowley, Confessions of Aleister Crowley

 When the Tenets of Shabbateanism and Frankism are considered, Crowley’s activities follow suite precisely. His “sex magic or ritual sex and narcissistic behavior follow suite with that of both Jacob and Eva Frank. His leadership role in Speculative Masonry is also a Frankist affectation. His apostasy is a Frankist leadership mandate fulfilling the sacrament.

His law of “freedom” DO WHAT THOU WILT is no different in character than the Sabbetean benediction “To him that allows the forbidden.”Crowley saw himself as his generations “apostate messiah” or incarnation of Tzevi. His duty therefore was to apostatize to fulfill the sacrament. Being Christian be took what would be considered the most reprehensible route in his apostasy.

In this vein he would either be genuinely horrified or wryly amused at the antics of a Satanic Church in his honor.449

Specifically although ahead of the curve this converso would be considered by Coomaraswamy as a Christian Traditionalist in the vein of his lord Jacob Frank. This would explain why such a religious and philosophy scholar would take him seriously, and why his work is getting a second look in modern day.

To make the point a little clearer, this is part of an interview with Ananda Cooaraswamy’s son Rama concerning his own conversion to Catholicism. After his conversion he became a Catholic Exorcist. He was also granted a dispensation in that he is a “married” priest.

Part of an interview with Joaquin Albaicin in 2003

Joaquin Albaicin: In his letters, your father gave to you indications regarding how to become a full member of the Hindu tradition. How was that belonging to a Brahman family did you finally embraced the Christian path instead of the Hindu one?
Rama Coomaraswamy: I grew up in Haridwar, one of the Holy Cities of India, and lived for years during my youth as an orthodox Hindu. Having been invested with the yajnopavita or sacred thread, I can state that since the Hindu view point I am a dvija or a “twice born”. But after my father’s death I returned to America, where my mother was essentially alone. As it was impossible for me to live as a Hindu in America at that time, and as living without any traditional affiliation was in my mind to live on an animal level, I entered Catholicism which I found completely compatible with my Hindu outlook.

…Let me speak to the matter of my conversion in which discussion I sense an ad hominum intent. Conversion is both a complex and a simple matter dependent on the grace of God. If I was taught as a Hindu to love and serve God, why would I not continue to believe that when I became a Catholic? And what is surprising about feeling uncomfortable in a purely secular society? I studied the Faith for some two years before seeking baptism.
I have a somewhat unusual background, Deo gratias. My family has included both Jesuit priests and Hindu monks. I was as young man first introduced to the reality of God by a Tibetan monk. I have lived with Hindus and Sufi Muslims as well as with many wonderful Catholics.

Many of these individuals feel about their religion much as I do about mine, I proffer no judgment about their beliefs, I know they are men of prayer and love God and feel they may well fall into those that St Pius X said belong to the soul of the Church. But as Muslims are fond of saying, “God knows best.” This does not mean that I am against conversion, and I am happy to preach when opportunity arises, “Christ, and Christ Crucified.” It should be absolutely clear that no one can be saved by error. Those outside the Church who are saved, are saved by the divine Word (logos) which is Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Since my conversion I have never departed from the traditional Catholic faith, though I have often fallen from grace. I think my writings bear witness to my orthodoxy. I think any aspersions cast upon my Catholicism are completely unjustified.

His use of (logos) must because of his position as priest and an Exorcist be assumed to be within Catholic orthodoxy. It is within the philosophic Cosmic Christ he recognizes as a Hindu. Through the lens of Neo Platonic speculation his fathers life’s work was the reconciliation of Hindi and specifically western
religious thought which in this case Catholicism is.

This is not as extraordinary as it may seem.

According to Konstantin Burmistrov in “Christian Orthodoxy and Jewish Kabbalah: Russian Mystics in Search for Perennial Wisdom,” in Polemical Encounters: Esoteric Discourse and Its Others” “We see that Russian Freemasons of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and their intellectual successors—Russian philosophers and theologians who lived a century later—turned to kabbalah in order to solve problems which they felt were not adequately elaborated in Christian Orthodox
theology.”

Converse to Aleister Crowley there is Huston Smith sometimes considered the fourth father of Perennial Philosophy. Both men were friends and co-religionists with Ananda Coomaraswamy. The difference again being one in his day was a national embarrassment to England, and Huston Smith450 considered a national religious treasure in the US.450

Huston Smith is Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Syracuse University. For fifteen years he was Professor of Philosophy at M.I.T. and for a decade before
that he taught at Washington University in St. Louis. Most recently he has served as Visiting Professor of Religious Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Rob Kall rob@opednews.com is editor/founder of OpEdNews.com.
This article is copyright Rob Kall and originally published by opednews.com but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog or web media so long as this credit paragraph is attached- Holder of twelve honorary degrees, Smith’s fourteen books include The World’s Religions which has sold over 2 . million copies, and Why Religion Matter which won the Wilbur Award for the best book on religion published in 2001. In 1996 Bill Moyers devoted a 5-part PBS Special, The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith, to his life and work. His film documentaries on Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, and Sufism have all won International. awards, and The Journal of Ethnomusicology lauded his discovery of Tibetan multiphonic chanting as “an important landmark in
the study of music.”

 Smith is a philosopher, scholar, and theologian who was held in such high esteem he has met the likes of Timothy Leary, Martin Luther King, Jr., Aldous Huxley, D. T. Suzuki, Eleanor Roosevelt, David Bohm, Thomas Merton, the Dalai Lama, and Bill Moyers. His religious views are eclectic enough to have used psychedelics with Timothy Leary.

According to Rob Kall in his Politics and Religion; An Interview With Huston Smith an interview with the world’s leading author on world religions discussing Jihad, the rapture, the Left Behind Series, and the use of religion to influence politics

“It’s difficult to miss encountering Huston Smith if you do a search on world religions, if you go to college and get textbooks…. he’s the one who wrote the books. So it was a great honor and pleasure to meet him and interview him at the first mythic journeys conference.”

 How is he connected with Crowley? He has practiced Christian faith for ninety years. Smith’s autobiography, “Tales of Wonder “writes of himself: Of most of the things that happened to me, had they not happened, I would still be the same person. Erase Christianity from my life, though, and you will have erased Huston Smith. Huston Smith clearly sees himself as a Christian. He writes succinctly what he thinks is required for person to be Christian. “If you think Jesus Christ is special, in his own category of specialness, and you feel an affinity to him, and you do not harm others consciously, you can consider yourself a Christian.”

Daily he reads “a few pages from the Bible or a bible (the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, the Koran, the Sufi poems of Rumi, and so on”. Then he prays. In his memoir, Smith writes of his Christian faith, and then of his “three other religions” – Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. “I never met a religion I did not
like…. I practiced Hinduism unconditionally for ten years, then Buddhism for ten years, and then Islam for another ten years – all the while remaining a Christian and regularly attending a Methodist church”.

 Between these three men is a representation of all sides of their faith, conservative, normative, and liberal. The intertwining relationships they had and mysticisms they plied are no different than the Catholic, Muslim, or Jewish Frankists of the eighteenth century that Gershom Scholem spoke about.
Although the Frankist groups are different in outlook, appearance, and practice, they were one united and cohesive group that maintained connections with each other. A unifying factor is as always Neo Platonic Philosophy and metaphysics.

The contributions to religion and philosophy these three men have made in just the USA have been enormous, and their influence within many circles immense. Worldwide they are revered for their religious and philosophical views that have guided the views of many theologians, mystics and philosophers. A cursory glance at the work of Professor Mark Sedgwick’s “Against the Modern World” or articles published by the Center for Millennial Studies at Boston University show the spread in the hard, soft, or normative within this religion.

The breadth of this religion is like the breadth of denominational Christianity in variegations. Some are extremely mystical (Cabala), some are philosophical, and some ritualistic.

Within just the philosophic end of the pool which is considered orthodox across the religions, we even find defenders of the faith- Neo Platonic Christianity who are revered and have celebrity for their articulated Traditionalism or classical Neo Platonism.

 “At almost regular intervals down the centuries someone will hit upon an idea which has some claim to truth. It is then blown up into a system which is thought to be capable of explaining everything. It is hailed as a key to unlock every door….In each case the thinkers concerned were so impressed with their
particular insight that they built it into a more or less rigid system which virtually destroyed its original usefulness.…if anything is to be learnt form the history of philosophy, we should be cautious in embracing one set of philosophical ideas to the exclusion of all others, and critical in our evaluation of all of them. Just as no single human being has exhaustive knowledge of the whole of reality, but may have partial and valid insights into this or that field of experience, so no philosophy is all embracing. Its insights and methods are often tentative and provisional. It may have a valid apprehension of this or
that. Its methods may be fruitful in exploring certain particular fields. But if we are wise, we shall be on our guard against definitive systems and allegedly omnipotent methods of approach”.451

451 Philosophy and the Christian Faith, Colin Brown, Dean of Studies at Trinity College in Bristol, England

 Shown earlier there never is a true separation from the philosophies and their associated mysticisms.