Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Songs Of The Spirit
    Songs Of The Spirit
    Songs Of The Spirit
    Ebook90 pages1 hour

    Songs Of The Spirit

    By Aleister Crowley

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    This early work of poetry, by Aleister Crowley, was originally published in 1898. Born in Royal Leamington Spa, England in 1875, Crowley was raised by Christian fundamentalist parents. He attended Trinity College at Cambridge University, but left before graduating. After leaving the college, he devoted his time to studying the occult, and travelled extensively throughout the world in persuit of its secret knowledge. He went on to become a prolific writer, producing essays, prose and poetry on a wide range of subjects. To this day he remains a highly influential figure, both in occult circles and popular culture. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900's and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateOct 21, 2015
    ISBN9781473377202
    Songs Of The Spirit
    Author

    Aleister Crowley

    Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) was an English poet, painter, occultist, magician, and mountaineer. Born into wealth, he rejected his family’s Christian beliefs and developed a passion for Western esotericism. At Trinity College, Cambridge, Crowley gained a reputation as a poet whose work appeared in such publications as The Granta and Cambridge Magazine. An avid mountaineer, he made the first unguided ascent of the Mönch in the Swiss Alps. Around this time, he first began identifying as bisexual and carried on relationships with prostitutes, which led to his contracting syphilis. In 1897, he briefly dated fellow student Herbert Charles Pollitt, whose unease with Crowley’s esotericism would lead to their breakup. The following year, Crowley joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret occult society to which many of the era’s leading artists belonged, including Bram Stoker, W. B. Yeats, Arthur Machen, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Between 1900 and 1903, he traveled to Mexico, India, Japan, and Paris. In these formative years, Crowley studied Hinduism, wrote the poems that would form The Sword of Song (1904), attempted to climb K2, and became acquainted with such artists as Auguste Rodin and W. Somerset Maugham. A 1904 trip to Egypt inspired him to develop Thelema, a philosophical and religious group he would lead for the remainder of his life. He would claim that The Book of the Law (1909), his most important literary work and the central sacred text of Thelema, was delivered to him personally in Cairo by the entity Aiwass. During the First World War, Crowley allegedly worked as a double agent for the British intelligence services while pretending to support the pro-German movement in the United States. The last decades of his life were spent largely in exile due to persecution in the press and by the states of Britain and Italy for his bohemian lifestyle and open bisexuality.

    Read more from Aleister Crowley

    Related to Songs Of The Spirit

    Related ebooks

    Religion & Spirituality For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Lives Of The Great Occultists

      Sep 10, 2020

      Personally, I blame that Aleister Crowley. If my memory serves me well (which, these days, it seldom does), Hunt Emerson and I more or less drifted into creating ‘Lives of the Great Occultists’ after I told him a couple of my favourite yarns about th

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Did You Know?

      Sep 29, 2020

      There are historical references to Valac in the 17th century magical text known as The Lesser Key Of Solomon and the 16th century Pseudomonarchia Daemonum. Both books, or grimoires, feature a list of demons and how to conjure them. Summoning spirit

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Cyprianus And The Black Books

      Mar 27, 2020

      Cyprianus And The Black Books
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ceremonial Magic

      Mar 27, 2020

      Ceremonial Magic
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ancient Egyptian Magic

      Mar 26, 2020

      Ancient Egyptian Magic
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Crowley And Huxley: A Trip In Berlin?

      Aug 12, 2021

      In 1977 International Times published ‘Sybarite among the Shadows’, a short story I had written based on Aleister Crowley initiating Aldous Huxley into the use of mescaline in Berlin in the 1930s. 1 For good measure, I spiced things up with a referen

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Hermeticism

      Feb 28, 2020

      In all probability, there was no philosophical basis for Rudolf’s worldview. He was a dabbler, an angler in the pool of ideas, an encourager of avant-garde thinkers who loved to have scholars and artists around him opening windows on esoteric and eve

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      “By Magicians, For Magicians…”

      Jul 14, 2022

      In the 1970s when a fuse board kept blowing and all the lights went out, Amado Crowley – who dubiously said he was Aleister’s secret son (see FT414:32-37) – announced he would claim he’d done it, just as his ‘father’ had, it is said, caused the books

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Rosicrucianism

      Feb 28, 2020

      Europe in the early 17th century was not a happy place. It was a continent marked by religious divisions and political strife which would escalate into the bloody Thirty Years’ War that led to eight million lives being lost. At the same time, it was

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Looking for LAYLAH

      Feb 23, 2023

      It’s an evocative and indelible image that has been used as an illustration for sundry books on magic, esotericism and the occult: a dusky, oneiric portrait of a woman, her face bearing a wistful, somewhat inscrutable expression. Pre-Raphaelite tress

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Mothers Of Alchemy

      Feb 28, 2020

      Mothers Of Alchemy
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Secrets And Symbols

      Feb 28, 2020

      One of the lesser-known alchemical symbols, the Dark Sun, or sol niger, is symbolic of change, essential to the goals of transmutation that alchemists worked towards. It can also be linked to the blackening of matter, or even putrefaction. This image

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      TEN POEMS Translations of Rafael Alberti

      May 1, 2024

      Throughout the centuries,through the nothingness of the world,I, without sleep, search for you. Behind me, imperceptible,without touching my shoulders,my dead angel keeps watch. Where is Paradise,Shadow, you who have been there?I ask silently. Cities

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Epic Of Gilgamesh

      Jan 1, 2020

      My friends, who can reach heaven? The monster bellows like a river swollen with flood.Many are consumed in his fiery breath. My friends, who can reach heaven? Let us ask the mountain for a sign.Let us cut the spirits from the cedars. My friends, who

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      RHYME & REASON

      May 17, 2021

      RHYME & REASON
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Mountain Time

      Jan 1, 2021

      In the air you don’t know who you are or where My own self feels it is in wind being born These are currents a man made one eighth of smokeless fire fears but chooses A path south from Anchorage to a Mountain House Ungovern the northern land to pass

      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Hello Darkness My Old Friend

      Jun 17, 2020

      Hello Darkness My Old Friend
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Seek And Ye Shall Find

      Oct 19, 2022

      Seek And Ye Shall Find
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2018

      In a hotel in a small town in Norfolk I am listening to someonethrowing glass bottles into a metal bin: toss-shatter, toss-shatter.There are no other sounds; it’s a quiet afternoonbut the one tossing them has a sense of rhythm and I havea sense that

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      In the Dolomites

      Sep 1, 2019

      1. The afternoon walk, it turns out, may not have been a walk at all.Nor can I locate in the Dolomites the placeWhere we met, though I remember It with a level of detailUsually I reserve for things of consequence.Snow layered in the crevices, white

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      From: “Gravity Archives”

      Sep 3, 2024

      1. Jetlagged visitor in London dark awry with first light catastrophic: tender welts and bruises, smears of iodine, bare bones scraped fleshless, fallen anyhow. What disaster fell and welters out of sight? But day distracts. Cold tube train wheels sq

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Five Poems

      May 1, 2023

      Let’s be GodFor a moment, Shall we?That which invites Composition,That which is suspended From a great height,The presence Of approximationHeavy in the meadows, I’m not afraid,And yet My shroud vanishesIn these lines, I am so weptPast weeping, And wh

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Tessa Castro

      Mar 9, 2022

      IN COMPETITION No 277 you were invited to write a poem called Morning Sounds. The entries were vivid: half domestic, half outdoor. Tim Lloyd observed that ‘A bin lorry approaching in reverse/Sounds like an asthmatic seal.’ Liz Piper remembered, durin

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Must-Read Poetry: October 2017

      Oct 3, 2017

      Poetry is malleable and moving; a form that will never tire of importance. The post Must-Read Poetry: October 2017 appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Bard In The Woods

      Nov 30, 2020

      Bard In The Woods
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ouroboros Essay

      Jan 1, 2021

      One person who cannot see you is you. We can get an idea from water or gold, depending on the light. So I know myself by approximation. There is a likeness between the curve of the paradisiacal snake and the parabolic arch of the bridge, but placed o

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems by Phillip B. Williams

      Dec 15, 2017

      The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human,I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reachcasts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breachthis page where, above, my own hand spectates. Babylonrisen, exorcism in reverse, whose nature upended now?

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Beneath An Eyelid

      Nov 17, 2022

      Last trains curve through our mist, buildings lift chins above us, planes circle, hypnotised. The river is a misshapen question, we answer, waking, white air, the love beneath an eyelid. Our molecules crush against pale ether; our songs float on wate

      1 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Songs Of The Spirit

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Songs Of The Spirit - Aleister Crowley

      Library

      Aleister Crowley

      Aleister Crowley was born in Royal Leamington Spa, England in 1875. Raised by Christian fundamentalist parents, he attended Trinity College at Cambridge University, but left before graduating. Upon leaving the college, he devoted his life to the occult, studying magic, qabalah, alchemy, tarot, and astrology. From 1900 onwards, Crowley travelled extensively, mainly in India and China. In 1904, while in Egypt, he produced one of his most popular works, The Book of the Law, and three years later he founded his magical order.

      Throughout the rest of his life, Crowley was a prolific writer, producing essays, prose and poetry on a wide range of subjects. In 1913, he published Magick (Book 4), a lengthy examination of his belief system which draws on a vast range of sources and is regarded by many as his magnum opus. In his later years, Crowley became addicted to heroin and struggled with bankruptcy. He died in Hastings, England, aged 72. To this day he remains a highly influential figure, both in occult circles and popular culture.

      Songs of the Spirit

        A fool also is full of words.

      Ecclesiastes.

      DEDICATION

      To J. L. BAKER.

      THE vault of purple that I strove

      To pierce, and find unchanging love,

      Or some vast countenance²

      All glory of the soul of man.

      Baffled my blind aspiring gaze

      With sunlight’s melancholy rays,

      And closed with iron hand the ways

      That sunder space, divide the days with fiery fan.

      Thine was the forehead mild and grave

      That shown throughout the azure nave

      Where Monte Rosa’s silence gave

      The starry organ’s measured sound.

      Where for an altar stood the bare

      Mass of Mont Cervin,³ towering there;

      And angels dwelt upon the stair,

      And all the mountains were aware that stood around.

      Thine was the passionless divine

      High hope, and the pure purpose thine,

      Higher and purer than stars shine,

      And thine the unexpressed delight

      To hold high commune with the wind

      That sings, in midnight black and blind,

      Strange chants, the murmurs of the mind,

      To grasp the hands of heaven and find the lords of light.

      Mine was the holy fire that drew

      Its perfect passion from the dew,

      And all the flowers that blushed and blew

      On sunny slopes by little brooks.

      Mine the desire that brushed aside

      The thorns, and would not be denied,

      And sought, more eager than a bride,

      The cold grey secrets wan and wide of sacred books.

      Thine was the hand that guided me

      By moor and mountain, vale and lea,

      And led me to the sudden sea

      That lies superb, remote, and deep,

      Showed me things wonderful, unbound

      The fetters that beset me round,

      Opened my waking ear to sound

      That may not by a man be found, except in sleep.

      Thy presence was as subtle flame

      Burning in dawny groves; thy name

      Like dew upon the hills became,

      And all thy mind a star most bright;

      And, following with wakeful eyes

      The strait meridian of the wise,

      My feet tread under stars and skies;

      My spirit soars and seeks and flies, a child of light.

      Thus eager, may my purpose stand

      Firm as the faith of honest hand,

      Nor change like castles built of sand

      Until the sweet unchanging end.

      Happy not only that my eye

      Single and strong may win the sky,

      But that one day the birds that fly

      Heard your fair friendship call me by the name of friend.

      THE GOAD.

      ανυγρο&nu αμπταιην

      αιθερα πορσο

      γαιασ Ελλανιασ

      αστερασ

      εσπερουσ

      οιον, οιον

      αλγοσ επαθον,

      φιλαι.

      EURIPIDES.

      AMSTERDAM, December 23rd, 1897.

      LET me pass out beyond the city gate.

      All day I loitered in the little streets

      Of black worn houses tottering, like the fate

      That hangs above my head even now, and meets

      Prayer and defiance as not hearing it.

      They lean, these old black streets! a little sky

      Peeps through the gap, the rough stone path is lit

      Just for a little by the sun, and I

      Watch his red face pass over, fade away

      To other streets, and other passengers,

      See him take pleasure where the heathen

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1
      pFad - Phonifier reborn

      Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

      Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


      Alternative Proxies:

      Alternative Proxy

      pFad Proxy

      pFad v3 Proxy

      pFad v4 Proxy