The Secret History of Lucifer: And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code (40 page)

Ever one for assuming the guise of the `laughing master' - like Simon Magus - Crowley declared, tongue in cheek, but still really, really meaning it: `I have been taxed with assaulting what is commonly known as virtue. True, I hate it, but only in the same degree as I hate what is commonly known as vice.'95

Moralists often rub their hands with glee over the story of Crowley's life - from Victorian gentleman to pitiful, povertystricken heroin addict in a boarding house at Hastings in 1947, begging his doctor for just one more fix96 - but he had long recognized that `attainment is insanity'. Despite appearances, this was not the pitiful death of a failed shaman: as real appreciation of his life and works continues to grow exponentially, it becomes ever clearer that there was little that was truly failed about The Great Beast.

His legacy is astounding. He left behind him a corpus of writings that improve with the keeping, and certainly do not become contemptuous with familiarity, indeed quite the reverse. Where this present enquiry is concerned, Crowley had a particular legacy to bequeath to future generations of seekers, although paradoxically he would have hated to think of it in these terms. But it was Aleister Crowley who gave would-be Luciferans the rules.

By its very nature, striking out into the unknown towards the bright light of the Morning Star is as fraught with danger as any pilgrim's progress. Even buoyed by the noblest of ideals, there are dangers aplenty, not the least the temptation of frolicking naughtily in the soft light of black candles to celebrate orgiastic fauxSatanism. The real thing, after all (by any other name) is and always will be a form of outright criminal insanity - the evils of a Hitler or a Saddam Hussein being beyond even the imagination of most people. Ordinary folk are simply not cut out to be true Satanists because like it or not, they possess a conscience and an intense disgust for the disgusting. Satanism in the suburbs may be an interesting diversion, but with its emphasis on dirt and darkness it can never provide the way to the Light. But whereas we all have to find our own path, and to some extent therefore make our own maps, these `rules' of Crowley's provide a sound basis for a well-lived life.

Everyone knows Crowley declared: `Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law', usually, and inaccurately, taking it to be a licence for depraved hedonism, but in fact his creed goes on: `Love is the Law, Love under Will'. He adds: `Every man and woman is a star' - echoed in diluted form in LaVey's `Each child is a minute Renaissance man'97 - explaining that in his system, `The sin against the Holy Ghost is to hinder another star from following its true will'. All too often, however, each individual `star' hinders his or her own path to their true will.

As Colin Wilson says, `Man is not small - he's just bloody lazy.'98

EPILOGUE

The Lucifer Key

`The Mystery of Sorrow was consoled long ago when it went out for a drink with the Universal joke.'

Aleister Crowley

Let the Light shine in! Let Lucifer shed light on the grubby little corners of the mind, the delusions, the illusions, the hypocrisies and grinning horrors within. As in the greeting to the Masonic initiate: `Let the Brother see the Light!' Let the Sister also see the Light!

To the Gnostics Light is All - just as to Jesus the Light was in Mary Lucifer, his `All' - but this must be balanced by an acknowledged Darkness. To the Christian Jesus Christ is `the Light of the World', although this will be denied with more or less vehemence not only by those of other religions such as Judaism, but was also denied and still is by the Gnostic Mandaeans, to whom only John the Baptist deserved the title `High King of Light'. Ironically, at the time of writing, both Christians and Mandaeans are suffering at the hands of the same Islamic fundamentalists in Iraq.'

Let the light shine in! Let it sweep away the curse of all and any form of fundamentalism - `From our commitment to ideals comes our excuse to hate" - as well as thought-police and political correctness. Instead, shine on good humour, the ability to laugh long and immoderately, especially at ourselves, and a highly devel oped sense of the absurd. Become your own `laughing master', intoxicated with the joy of living. Without humour and alertness freedoms are eroded, then only the pompous, the stupid or, much, much worse, abominable dictators will certainly triumph - and the world has had quite enough of them.

In December 2004 British comic actor Rowan Atkinson ('Mr Bean') reacted strongly against a proposed law banning incitement to religious hatred, as a threat to free speech. He said:

The right to offend is more important than the right not to be offended. Freedom of expression must be protected for artists and entertainers and we must not accept a bar on the lampooning of religion and religious leaders.

There is an obvious difference between the behaviour of racist agitators who can be prosecuted under existing laws, and the activities of satirists and writers who may choose to make comedy or criticism of religious belief, practices or leaders just as they do with politics.

It is one of the reasons why we have free speech.'

Indeed, it is, but the way things are going on both sides of the Atlantic, we may not have free speech very much longer. As aspiring Luciferans we must keep watch on the incremental erosion of all our hard-won rights and freedoms. Use freedom of speech while it lasts to ensure that it will. It is not enough to fall back on evoking the mysterious and elusive `democracy' that the West is so eager to force-feed to others. It has to be seen to work well in practice in the land of the Mother of Parliaments and the Land of the Free first. Luciferans speak up, or you may soon be denied any kind of a voice at all.

The Light in action

Lucifer is the god of progress and intellectual enquiry, not only the divine inspiration behind the spiritual enlightenment of the Gnostic and the heretic and the lover of God in all his/her forms: it was through Lucifer's spirit that humanity first climbed down from the trees and has represented the flow of progress ever since. But Lucifer may be more than a metaphor for rebellion, enlightenment and advancement - as the pure creative and motive light s/he may actually be the key to life itself ...

Over the past fifteen years scientists, largely in Europe and Asia, have made a major discovery. The DNA within the nuclei of all cells of living creatures contains biophotons or ultra-weak proton emissions - in other words, light. While it is invisible to the naked eye, it can be detected using new equipment developed by German scientists.

As German science writer Marco Bischof declares in his groundbreaking Biophotons - The Light in Our Cells (1995): `A dynamic web of light constantly released and absorbed by the DNA may connect cells, tissues and organs and serve as the organism's main communication network and as the principal regulating instance of all life processes.' He suggests that `the holographic biophoton field of the brain and nervous system, and maybe even that of the whole organism, may also be the basis of memory and other phenomena of consciousness .. 4

And, excitingly for we Luciferans who refuse to delineate between `good' and `bad' sciences - between honest enquiry and well-funded research that, while paying lip-service to the wildest theories of quantum physics, derides research into the possibilities of continuing consciousness after death - biophotons even possess implications for the unconventional. Bischof writes that `The "prana" of Indian Yoga physiology may be a similar regulatory energy force that has a basis in a weak, coherent electromagnetic biofield.'

Lucifer is on the move, inside you and me, chattering between cell and cell, rousing the cohorts of the life-force, keeping us alive and wonderful. Every man and woman is a star - and now we know we have our own inner Tinkerbell light.

But for those who insist on confusing Lucifer with Satan and then indulging in a spot of Devil-worship behind the lace curtains of suburbia, a word of warning. We now enter the world of `extreme possibilities'.

Just imagine

In his article on sailor-turned-Satanist Chris Cranmer (see page 242),6 Colin Wilson - about whom there is nothing remotely prissy or prudish - warned of the very real pitfalls of Satanism. He cites the case of celebrated photo-journalist Sergei Kordiev and his wife who in 1959 became involved in a Satanic circle in Burnham-onCrouch, Essex. After undergoing the usual colourful initiation ceremony, complete with a pact signed in their own blood, all seemed to go wonderfully for them, both financially and careerwise. But then they were forced to witness the rape of a girl - she was being punished for betraying the group's secrets - at a Black Mass, where all the Satanists had to drink the blood of a cockerel, specifically sacrificed for the purpose. Shaken and seriously regretting their involvement, the Kordievs later discovered that the man to whom the girl had betrayed their secrets had dropped dead of a heart attack at precisely the same time as the Black Mass was being performed. When they left the group their luck changed for the worse. Kordeiv came close to bankruptcy and his wife had a breakdown. And one night his studio was wrecked by a mysterious force, even though no one had broken in. It seems they also had a poltergeist to contend with.

Colin Wilson's other cautionary tale is perhaps more sensational. He cites author John Cornwell's research into good and evil,' during which he found a teacher who had been drawn into a Satanist cell, who at his initiation was `told to beg the Devil to take possession of him, at which point his teacher said: "If you want to see the Devil, look over there."

`The man looked round and saw a man-sized crow, its wings covered in slime. Then it opened its beak, and bloody male sexual organs emerged. The man collapsed in terror.

`Even with the help of a priest, it was a long time before the man regained his sanity.'R

A blood-chilling story indeed, but although one feels for the victim's experience of abject terror, had it really never crossed his mind that volunteering to become involved with a Satanist group might lead to such an encounter with a creature from the Pit, if not Old Nick himself? What in hell's name did he expect? Even Satanism in the Suburbs can occasionally spring some unwelcome surprises - and would be very tame if it didn't.

Whether this was `merely' diabolically clever hypnotism or truly a creature from the Abyss hardly matters. The damage was done. In fact, it may have been neither an hallucination nor the real thing, but a curious entity from the last frontier - of inner space.

Occultists and mystics have long known that visible beings called tulpas can actually be created by the human mind if one concentrates long and hard enough. It helps to be specially trained and mentally prepared, for otherwise that way madness could well lead.

A classic tulpa story is that of the early twentieth-century traveller Madame Alexander David-Neel. Having developed a passion for Buddhist art she was visited in her temporary Tibetan home by a local painter who specialized in painting `wrathful deities'. She was astounded to witness a misty form behind him of one of these terrifying entities, especially when she put out her arm and felt as if she were `touching a soft object whose substance gave way under the slight push'.' The artist confessed that he had been engaged in rituals to conjure the god whose outline she had just seen.

Fascinated, Madame David-Neel decided to create her own tulpa - a fat, jolly monk. Being nothing if not thorough, she went into retreat for a matter of months to concentrate her mind on this exercise in `extreme possibilities', and after some time began to get brief flashes out of the corner of her eye of a monk-like shape. Time passed and she concentrated further, and gradually her monk became more lifelike and solid. But then he changed from being the fat and jolly being she had set out to create, into a leaner figure that was, `troublesome and bold'. But to pre-empt all suggestions that solitude and obsession had affected Madame David-Neel's mind and that she was simply hallucinating, an unlooked-for breakthrough occurred when a local herdsman stopped by - and mistook her monk for a real man. Now quite malevolent, he had to go, but the process of `collapsing' him took six months of concentrated effort. If she had let him run amok, gaining strength and solidity, who knows what he might have done?

Over the centuries brave and learned men and women have sought to conjure all manner of beings, from angels to devils, and many have succeeded in conjuring something, although they often wished they hadn't. Whether the entity came from their own minds as a hallucination from their psyche like a tulpa or thoughtform, or whether it actually came from another dimension hardly matters. Conjuration is an enormous responsibility, not only for your own health and peace of mind, but also for those around you, possibly for years.

As a Luciferan you will do as you will (for it is the whole of the Law, Love under Law, Love under Will), but my advice is if and when you work with the unknown don't dabble in the occult. Do it properly! Read everything you can, not only about magic but also about the powers of the mind, prepare mentally and physically, and set up a support team in case of problems. Most importantly, never lose your sense of humour: it is your greatest protection for all manner of horrors from all manner of sources. Act like an intelligent child: open to the possibilities of the phenomena but willing to cut short the experiment if it goes wrong. The minute there's a problem, switch on the light, go to the pub, watch a funny programme, laugh. Or, and this is by far the best advice, forget all about it and go to the pub and laugh anyway. You have no need to conjure anything.