There is a lot of negative slander about Crowley, the mere mention of his name to someone who knows who he was in any degree tends to conjure images of summoning demons and the other weird shit people think of when the word "magic" is used in any way besides a stage illusionist (aside from those who actually know about him and his works). However, Crowley is also one who loved to toy with the public and as a result, many myths were started about him, and he quite enjoyed this game until later in his life when he was saddened that people thought him a black magician. Here are some of the major myths that are discredited by his own words in his books, particularly that he died decrepit and totally broke, or that he advocated human sacrifice lol. Ten Crowley Myths Busted by AC2012 | Aleister Crowley 2012
the dominance of certain christian religions in American times has often allowed them to "demonized" all beliefs that do not come directly from them......allowing them to become what they were running from when they came to America...(i could go on) they are missing out on much.... cursing that which they do not understand..... how many lives.... how much knowledge lost...... all because if you are not like them you must be evil..... following what he felt....and refusing to conform is the only reason such rumors arose .......he scared them.....
As much as I like Crowley myth no. 6 is hardly busted. It's basically passed off as "he was a psychonaut". I know a meth addict who considers himself a mystic and a psychonaut but in reality it doesn't make him any less of a drug addict.
Yeah that one isn't necessarily true. The truth of it is this. Earlier in his life he did many drugs, and he liked to experiment with their effects in ritual etc. and advocated their use for that purpose. However when he had gotten older and was still struggling to get off of opiates he despised the use of drugs, and said that they had no real use for ritual purpose. So on one hand, early in life, yes, he was a "psychonaut" in that he experimented with various drugs to test how they effected ritual, but then came to the conclusion that they were just useless and terrible. I was actually the same way, I used to do all kinds of things for the sake of consciousness expansion, but I realized they only expand the consciousness a very limited amount and that I still hadn't reached what I was looking for, and so now having found that conclusion I offer my personal experience/conclusion to others who are hoping to find enlightenment or whatever through drug use. All it led me to was addiction which I broke awhile ago.
He contradicts himself a lot on issues of racism, sexism, anti-semitism, etc. Don't know very much about him, he seems okay
A lot of occult writers do that on purpose. They call them initiatic blinds, where an Initiate writes something that in it's literal sense is a half or whole lie, but in it's true intended meaning is something quite different. I won't pretend to know of any exact examples to give you, since I'm not an Initiate just yet. I'm trying to think of one that I have been told when I asked about it. The only one I can think of isn't a good example, it was in a book by Franz Bardon where he said that you must wait for an elemental being to speak to you first when you project into that elemental kingdom (so for projecting into the Earth element you would wait for one of the gnomes to address you first) otherwise you could become enslaved. You will not actually become enslaved though, the purpose of waiting is because if you are spoken to first it makes you an authority in the eyes of other elementals, so in that regard you are the Master instead of "the slave", but it is not speaking of literal enslavement.