Book of the Law

Rating:
Summary: The "Hole" of the Law
Review: I have a deep respect for some of Crowley's writings...the man certainly was a genius in some respects. But I found this book to be a total waste of time, and I followed the directions at the end of the book and simply discarded the darn thing! The three main quotes that come from this piece of literary garbage is "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law", "Love is the Law, Love under Will" and "Everybody is a Star". There, I just saved you the $7.95 (less Amazon discount) for the book. The rest is eclectic/esoteric dribble. Crowley himself has claimed this to be some great revelation from some Higher Being...yikes! Maybe some of the Mystic/Magician wanna be's will pretend to glean some erudite magical formulas, but my conclusion is that unless you're totally stoned or from some other planet, you'll probably just get a headache from trying to find something (anything!)out of this. So do what thou wilt...but as for myself, I would suggest that thou leave this one off of your reading list!

Rating:
Summary: THELEMA AND LOUISE or WHAT NOT TO DO ON YOUR HONEYMOON
Review: As dictated by the big bubble head Aiwass... uh huh, sure... More evidence of the Exploding Hindenburg that is contemporary Western Esotericism. Crowley wasn't so much a fraud as much as he was an adventurer, who used the occult as justification for his, to put it mildly, unconventional lifestyle. Would have been nice if he just kept to mountaineering and buggering North African young boys, but, alas, or perhaps "Aiwass", he decided he was the Master Therion announcing the Age of The Conquering Child. If so, the Child's a brat. Crowley was a wild eccentric, not the first or probably the last to spring from England's mountains green, but hardly a mystic. If Aiwass did "exist", one of John Keel's "Ultraterrestrials" maybe, the bubble head must have floated way chuckling thinking to himself..."Old P.T. was right..."

Rating:
Summary: Jabber: Wha' key?
Review: Rather; like chinese nested spheres, in which case it should be pronounced "Book of The Raw". And what about the comment at the end by Boy Min: nigh M.Y.O.B. Not for Tantrum Practitioners. But if you take this terminal trip; Remember: "Era erase ere Eros Err".

Rating:
Summary: An Sociological, Ethnomethodological, Magical Text
Review: This text, delivered by XCIII == 418 to DCLXVI (known as A. Crowley to Amazon.com) isn't simply the magical, occult text that many assume it to be. It is also a sociological text which has elements of phenomenology and ethnomethodology. The statement, on page 22 that: "This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all," applies to some of the main tenents of E. Husserl's phenomenology, like when Husserl says in _Cartesian Meditations_ that: "The world is for us, something that only claims being," (p. 18). The _Book of the Law_ quote also shades much towards the theoretical work of phenomenologists Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Alfred Schutz. I also see a great deal of ethnomethodological theory in the _Book of the Law_, like in 45. on page 24: "The Perfect and the Perfect are one Perfect and not two; nay, are none!" This statement seems to embody Harold Garfinkel's ethnomethodological concepts of the 'etc. clause' and 'ad-hocing'. Now, am I saying that Crowley was influenced by the contemporary theorists? By no means, but E. Husserl was philosophizing at the time... so who knows. Either way, this is an excellent text, and much better than any work by Husserl (who could have read Crowley) because it has magical powers.

Rating:
Summary: Destroy This Book...
Review: ... Well not really :) Liber Al vel Legis can be viewed as an essay on the relationship of Man and "god". This book, "received" by Aleister Crowley on his honeymoon in 1904 is a powerfull work that can break through people's preconceptions (misconceptions?) of reality, religion and Man's place in the cosmos.

I have read this book more times than I can count, and always come away with new insights... not so much insights into the text, but insights into my own self. Reading this book is an agent of change, one cannot help being changed by reading this...be it for the better or the worse.

(Such is the reason for Crowley's famous Comment appended to the end of the text, and the joke in the title of this review.)

A previous reviewer blasts this book and paradigm for "borrowing" from other religions and beliefs, but to me this is the sublime beauty of it. Crowley or Aiwass (whomever you choose to think the author is), did steal and borrow from all religions, finding the common threads, and weaving a wonderfull web out of the best, and disposing of the rest.

Overall, even if one is not interested in Thelema, magick, or anything out of the "ordinary", I would recommend this short book just to challenge what you believe and what you hold to be true

Rating:
Summary: An Interesting Presentation Of Ethics
Review: This is an attractive, nicely bound volume. Its first fifty pages contain a typeset statement of "The Law". Its remaining pages contain a handwritten facsimile of The Law.

Like any statement of ethics, portions of The Law are difficult to understand. Most puzzling is that upon completion, the reader learns that the page fifty discussion stands alone. The first forty-nine pages' discussion are superceded by page fifty.

Each reader must judge why the author chose this presentation method. Each reader also must judge the validity of The Law.

Rating:
Summary: Thelema
Review: The definitive work on Thelema by one of the most important (and infamous) practicants of the modern era. This, along with Crowley's _Magick in Theory and Practice_ should be in the library of every student of magic and the occult.

Rating:
Summary: This book has never touched my bookshelf
Review: Do what thou Wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

I say this because it's always on the coffee table, or bedside table, or in my backpack, or wherever I was reading it last. This book both provokes thoughts as well as gives advice. If I could give only one 5 star review this would be it. With the depth involved in the book either it was truly written by a praeter-human intelligence named Aiwass or Crowley was praeter-human himself in his very early career. I nominate it best book of the Aeon.

Love is the Law; Love under Will.

Rating:
Summary: So what!
Review: Whatever this book is - it isn't ORIGINAL. A.C. repeats a bit of tantrism, a bit of Buddhism, a bit of late 19th Century academic dogma concerning comparative mythology (particularly Egyptian). He gives us a bit of this and a bit of that. And it's all written in the 'Swinburnian' that A.C. was fond of in his Cambridge days. It also has a Freudian feel to it. I don't know who or what Aiwass was, but it seems he or it had a very limited education. Thelemites might try reading some critical biography of Crowley. (p.s. I know exactly what they've said - 'Aiwass told Swinburne and Freud what to write, and he invented tantrism, Buddhism, and Egyptian religion as well.')!

Rating:
Summary: This is a book for people who love god, not hate him!
Review: In Crowley's AHA he states that it was essential for him to surrender to god at one point in his initiatory progress. It is sad to see that some who follow Crowley today (one reviewer below, for example) think he is a devil worshipper and only idolizes himself! He is nothing of the kind! He is no more of a devil worshipper than those who worship Lord Shiva! Unfortunately, too many of us in the West condemn that which varies from safe and sane fundamentalist dogma. Admittedly Crowley seemed to have an axe to grind with hypocritical Christians, and probably didn't like the tyranny of "one God" either, but to see a reviewer applaud Liber Al vel Legis "if you hate God" appalls me.

That having been said, when one reads this revalatory, short, poetic text, one realizes he or she is not in Kansas anymore. Three gods are presented in Liber Al: Nuit, a sky (as opposed to earth!) mother, Had or Hadit, the stern male, and Ra-Hoor-Khuit, an exceedingly wrathful male. The text of Ra-Hoor-Khuit is particulary disturbing, so much so that Crowley tried to forget and lose the book for years, before coming to accept it. The story of Crowley's initial rejection and ultimate acceptance is fascinating. This story can be found in Book Four (ed. Hymanaeus Beta)together with a reproduction of the original soiled manuscript of the text.

This book is a koan wrapped inside a riddle wrapped in side a puzzle. Have fun with it!