Abstract
Aleister Crowley’s (1875–1947; see figure 4.1) Rite of Saturn premiered at London’s Caxton Hall in 1910. This was the first of seven magical rituals that were performed between October 19 and November 30, as part of a larger work titled Rites of Eleusis.1 Crowley’s Rites of Eleusis were a mixture of poetry, ecstatic dance, music, and ceremonial magic that he had developed with the initiates of the Argenteum Astrum, a secret society whose members studied and practiced ceremonial magic. The elements of ceremonial magic were plentiful within the Rites of Eleusis: the performers were actual magicians who performed incantations and magical gestures, the costumes included hooded robes, the stage was decorated with an altar bearing a collection of occult symbols, and the audiences were encouraged to wear specific colors that corresponded to the nature of the god being evoked in each of the rituals. Some audience members were sympathetic to Crowley’s theatrical aesthetic. For others, the performance, which was staged in semidarkness, suggested something diabolical or perverse. A critic from one periodical, the Penny Illustrated Paper, accused Crowley of using the Rites of Eleusis to “suggest an elusive form of Phallicism or sex worship” and to compel audiences to witness a “Black Mass.”2
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Notes
Richard Kaczynski, Perdurabo: The Life of Aleister Crowley (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2010), 224.
Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law (1904; reprint, n.p.: Ordo Templi Orientis, 2007), 17.
For more information on Neitszche’s distinctions between “master morality” and “slave morality,” see Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, e-book version (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 154–155..
Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography, corrected edition (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983), 52–53.
Israel Regardie, The Golden Dawn: A Complete Course in Practical Ceremonial Magic (St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 1995), xvii–xxx, 1–25, rear cover;
see also Mary K. Greer, The Women of the Golden Dawn: Rebels and Priestesses (Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 1995), xx;
see also Lawrence Sutin, Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 23.
Lawrence Sutin, Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 5.
Brenda Maddox, Yeats’s Ghosts: The Secret Life of W. B. Yeats (New York: Perennial, 1999), 12.
Crowley, The Book of the Law (1904; reprint, Tumwater, WA: Capital City Press, 1989), 9.
Aleister Crowley, Magick in Theory and Practice (1929; reprint, New York: Dover, 1976), xiv–xv.
Lon Milo DuQuette, Magick of Thelema (York Beach, MA: Samuel Weiser, 1993), 133.
Anthony Kubiak, “Cyber-ecstasy and the Visionary in American Politics,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 31 (January 2009): 113.
Georg Feuerstein, Holy Madness: The Shock Tactics and Radical Teachings of Crazy Wize Adepts, Holy Fools, and Rascal Gurus (New York: Arkana, 1990), 59.
John Symonds, The Great Beast: The Life and Magick of Aleister Crowley (1971; reprint, Frogmore, St. Albans: Mayflower Books, 1973), 13.
Ronald Hutton, Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, paperback edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 79.
Jane Goodall, Artaud and the Gnostic Drama (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994), 8–11.
Lon Milo Duquette, The Magick of Aleister Crowley: A Handbook of the Rituals of Thelema (York Beach, MA: Weiser, 2003), 25.
J. F. Brown, “Aleister Crowley’s Rites of Eleusis,” Drama Review 22 (June 1978): 16.
Crowley, The Rites of Eleusis (Thame and Oxon: Mandrake Press, 1990), 66.
Aleister Crowley, Book 4 (1980; reprint, York Beach. MA: Samuel Weiser, 1996), 60, 70.
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© 2014 Edmund B. Lingan
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Lingan, E.B. (2014). Aleister Crowley’s Thelemic Theatre. In: The Theatre of the Occult Revival. Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137448613_5
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