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Comment by b800h | Hacker News Reader

Crowley, and his forebear Eliphas Levi, are responsible for the stupid air of sulphur which hangs around a lot of modern esoterica.

AC has his apologists, and he was obviously clever, but he was unquestionably a complete turd, and created a religious system which was fundamentally Satanic, wrapped in enough layers of obfuscation that it can fascinate intelligent people, especially those who have received a substandard education in theology, which is practically everyone these days.

Someone asked why Crowley is perennially popular on HN. It's because his approach appeals to people who have experienced enough religion to understand that there is something there, but are struggling to reconcile it with our culture's dominant scientific materialism, because they're bright enough to want to try to. "The method of science, the aim of religion". A lot of HN matches that demographic.

There are better ways of squaring the circle, but they're less sexy.

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> ...substandard education in theology.

Isn't most of theology just folks getting red faced arguing over things which are ultimately just made up, and are unknowable anyway in the first place? It's only a step away from a couple of guys shouting at each other about how the warp nacelles work in Star Trek.

There's a substantive difference between a religious argument on Twitter and proper theological argument which leans into philosophy. The problem is that people aren't typically exposed to the good stuff because teachers and the media don't know it either. Sadly even local religious leaders; that's a serious issue.

Do you have any theological reading recommendations? Preferably not oriented (at least not wholly) around Christianity.

I'll go out on a limb here because the alternative is recommending a load of Christian stuff in combination with Philosophy and Eastern theology. David Bentley Hart is quite good, and his book "You Are Gods" may well be what you're looking for. I haven't read that specific title though. I ought to, it's sitting in my bookcase.

I am a Sikh (this isn't the reason I am not so keen on christian literature, I've just already been exposed to a fair bit) so I would definitely be interested in some material related to Eastern faiths, I'll check out David Bentley Hart too.

Plato is pretty good. He does this cool thing where the theology and morality of the city state is presented in a way which enables further development of the sciences and arts.

Really blows your mind when you start to put it all together.

I just picked up You are Gods and it's actually pretty dense stuff and would be a poor choice if you were tired of Christian thought (even if he winds Vedanta into it). It might be worth having a look at Bentley Hart on Wikipedia and seeing if some of his other work appeals. "The Experience of God" is very good, as is "The Beauty of the Infinite". But obviously he's writing from a Christian perspective. From a completely different tack, you might read the "Tripura Rahasya", that's a good Eastern book of mystical philosophy.

Some of the stuff I found most satisfying was proper modern Christian Apologetics, such as the Handbook of Catholic Apologetics. But the Eastern writing is excellent getting across the scale of the infinite and relating that to people on a personal level.

I just want to say thank you both for the back and forth, this is one of the most thought-provoking things I've seen in a while.

Plus, a book recommendations is always good :).

You might want to take a look at Rebuttal of the Logicians by Ibn Taymiyyah and The Incoherence of the Philosophers by Al-Ghazali, as far as classical Islamic theological works that have been translated, those will be your go to books but they're by no means introductory works.

That's a good shout. What are invaluable and in sadly limited supply are religious teachers who can explain things one on one. As a result of (amazingly and sadly) the Second World War, this sort of training fell out of fashion in seminaries, and led to all sorts of dire consequences.

As a contrast to those works, Summa Contra Gentiles by Aquinas would be a good follow up.

Then to pull both together try Christian-Islamic Preambles of Faith - An Exercise in Philosophy of Religion or Kalâm for Our Day Modeled after Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Books I-III by Joseph Kenny, OP.

https://www.crvp.org/publications/Series-IIA/IIA-10-Contents...

It's still all make-believe. And I say this as someone who has had an interest in Fortean and occult lore for years - it's just folklore people choose to pretend is real.

No its not. Its metaphor for truth which is unable to be expressed with precise language - because we lack understanding.

How can theology be a metaphor for truth when the core of what it's trying to reason about is unknowable?

"Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief" [1]. The latter part I get, lots of people and groups (and regions) have religious beliefs and differences, so it's definitely worth some effort to figure out (from a sociological or anthropological view) what's going on within and between groups of people.

I also get the ethics and philosophy parts, trying to what it means to be "good" etc. But this study of the divine is pure horses*t - even if it's not all just made up, then by definition it's still unknowable. If it's something that someone has just concocted on a whim and claimed it was dictated to them by the Almighty, then it's at best a 2nd or 3rd hand source and a dubious one at that.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theology

I think he means the occult, not theology.

The occult is a form of theology. The sense I take is that he's taking a pot-shot at the lot of it. But I could be wrong.

You might like to look at some apologetical writing. Christian apologetics, for example, are often split into three layers, essentially:

1. Is there a God - this is actually fairly straightforward to argue, simply because we can use analytical philosophy to reason about the unknowable and first causes and so on.

2. Is Jesus God - much tougher to approach for obvious reasons, but can at least be reasoned about if you've gone through step 1.

3. Should I be x sort of Christian - easier to reason about if you accept 1 & 2.

That first step is very approachable if you're already interested in things like logical proofs and higher physics.

Your first layer isn't really "Is there a God" but "Does the Judeo-Christian God exist?" Like Pascal's Wager, Christian apologetics begins by assuming that the only God that can possibly exist is the one Christians already believe in.

And neither logic nor higher physics proves that Christianity has the right idea out of the multitude of human religions and infinitude of possibilities beyond.

@krapp - Disagree on that point. Obviously the three above are going to break down into further stages, but there are plenty of apologetic arguments which squarely fall into a broad question of "is there a God?" and not a more specific question.

You're right about the starting point though. By its very nature it has to start there, but it doesn't assume that the people it'll be arguing with will be in the same place.

In my estimation it is, in its basest explanation, a means of hacking religious reward system of ones own brain. We have this spiritual nature to us which cannot be explained, but the study of the divine is an excercise in honing and directing that spiritual aspect. This can absolutely affect real change in ones own mindset and behaviour. In this way, I say it is metaphor that reveals truth. It reveals truth about the way our brains work, what motivates us, how to direct ones own will, etc.

Now, on a more abstract and heady level, I would posit that because these techniques do induce real change in our brains, that they may point at a truth outside of ourselves. For instance- when I hear of occult practicioners worshipping demons of greed in order to obtain personal wealth- it makes me think that the idea of "demons" ought mot to be tossed out ebtirely. In a certain sense, theyre real. Worship of these demons amounts to giving oneself over to the spirit of that demon (e.g. greed) now does this mean there is a real flying bat like demon creature - no, but it is a lesson in the nature of these demons within ourselves. We all have inner aspects which are base and immoral, and when we choose to feed them, it is akin to worshiping a deity- i creasing the influence and control it has over your thought processes.

Hope this made sense. I find the intersection of occult practice, jungian psychology, and judeo christion demonology to be a very very rich subject where surprising insights abound.

If you lack understanding of the truth, and can only refer to it through metaphor, then how do you know it is true?

> If you lack understanding of the truth, and can only refer to it through metaphor, then how do you know it is true?

Sure, then why bother systematizing its study in theology, would it be better to just study English language usage of metaphor?

I've always been fascinated by the idea that there's this arcane knowledge, hidden from ordinary people, mastery of which allows the universe to be one's plaything.

Math, programming, science, economics: These things seem to be as close to the real deal as one can get. Which makes them quite satisfying on the one hand, but also a little disappointing. Those things are...too limited, not magical enough, not...powerful enough to deal with many Real Problems. There's still sickness, death, weakness, evil, conflict...

On the one hand, our resources and technology are incredible by the standards of any prior period in history. On the other hand, we seem to be beset by problems on all sides. I badly want magic to be real, and humanity to have an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent father figure to help solve its problems and guide its development.

Christianity has some fascinating hints of supernatural powers. It's a real shame religion is so obsessively focused on the moral lessons. As a child learning about the Bible for the first time, I had so many more practical inquiries that I've never gotten adequately answered:

- Jesus went around healing people with a touch. What exactly were the mechanics of this? Is it only usable on leprosy specifically, or did it work for other diseases? Did other people have this ability? Has anyone come up with a plausible explanation of how the healing powers worked on a molecular level? Could this be a clue to useful cures for diseases today?

- Death and resurrection. How was the resurrection practically achieved? Can anyone be brought back to life, or do you have to have the kind of relationship with God that Jesus did? If we figure out the process Jesus used to come back to life, could we create technology to repeat this process and bring other dead people back to life? Is the power far beyond our current technology? Or is there some fundamental limitation making it a power that only God can use?

- The relationship between God and Jesus is super confusing to me. Jesus is commonly explained as the Son of God, but also he's sort-of like a body part of God -- and there's also a Holy Ghost involved that's sort-of a third thing, but also the Holy Ghost is also sort-of another body part of both Jesus and God -- I really don't understand it, but apparently it's super important and something that caused major disagreements among early Christian scholars. What are the practical implications?

- God talking through the burning bush. What the heck was going on there? Is there any explanation of why the burning bush was the form God chose to manifest? Has anyone else managed to set a bush on fire and hold an actual conversation with the Creator of the Cosmos? Has anyone tried performing, say, 10,000 experiments, setting 100 species of bushes on fire with 100 different firestarting methods, with a super sensitive microphone in case the voice is very faint, and a bunch of fancy physics gear to look for weird particles or radiation that might be emitted as a side effect of opening a DM to the Sysadmin of the Universe?

- One of the Old Testament prophets (Elijah I think?) at the end of his life, was taken into Heaven on a chariot of fire. That's exactly how I'd expect people from a couple millenia ago describe a rocket launch. Could this have been an instance of space travel?

- The angels come from heaven and look super weird -- apparently frightening to humans because they always open conversations with "Do not be afraid". Could angels be aliens?

- The city turned to ash in a flash of light. Could this be a description of a nuclear bomb? What about the survivor who turned around to look at it, and got petrified into a pillar of salt? Is there any known physical phenomenon that could account for that? Has anyone found those ruins and tested them for radiation, weird isotopes, etc.? Has anyone found the pillar of salt? Is it good old NaCl, or some other kind of salt? Is there DNA preserved in it? Is there any evidence of other ancient cities being nuked, or people being turned into pillars of salt?

- The Ten Commandments etched into stone tablets with lightning. Are there any other known instances of lightning carving useful information in human language into stone or other materials? Are the tablets themselves still around? Has anyone tested them for radioactive isotopes or other weird stuff that might still be around a couple thousand years later, either from the lightning or from God's power directing the lightning?

- I'm super confused about why God doesn't do more. If I was God, I'd definitely smite some evildoers with lightning bolts. Heal those who are sick and shouldn't be. Resurrect those who are dead and shouldn't be. Set a bunch of bushes on fire everywhere and start reminding people they should be good. Use lightning to write a proof or disproof of P=NP on a stone tablet during the Super Bowl in front of thousands of live witnesses, and millions more watching on TV.

- I'm super confused about how God is supposed to be good. He gets super mad at us when we follow the sinful urges he built into us when he designed us, floods an entire country with water for 40 days because too many people were bad, punished people for crap their ancestors did, and only stopped when we killed his son? That sounds like a narcissistic bully who's prone to falling into murderous rages. Not any father figure I'd want to have.

Without an empirical reference somewhere in the conversation, it's just fanfic.

Fanfic of what?

So you say he fooled all the people with magic, and he waited on Satan's call?

> Someone asked why Crowley is perennially popular on HN.

Because people are waiting for a Marvel to take them to space.

He certainly didn't fool all the people. And those he did fool were largely fooled by sophistry, not magic.

True, but there remains value in questions on the mode of thought that leads to such activities: "Mr. Crowley, what went on in your head?" And, too, given the general preoccupation necromancy seems to exercise both on practitioners in learned circles and on the public imagination, it's not a surprise to see so often asked, "Mr. Crowley, did you talk to the dead?"

Crowley might have been a drug-addicted sophist and not a good source for seeking ultimate truths. But was he a good sophist? I am interested in occultism and symbology, but only as entertainment. I am certain of my materialistic beliefs. It might be that he is so popular here because he is clever and decadent, something shocking and thrilling if you don't take it as truth.

Also, was he actually a fun sophist? You seem to have read a lot so I would ask for your opinion. Is he worth reading for entertainment?

Absolutely! He's very entertaining.

As a committed materialist, what do you make of the Kalaam cosmological argument and others which make similar points? How can something come from nothing?

I am not well-read enough to really have a reasoned answer, but mine is that we don't know. But just because there is something more, something we don't understand, doesn't mean that it's something greater. It's just something we don't understand.

Through the ages people tried to answer the great mysteries with great answers, but they didn't achieve anything. Truth should have predictive power, and understanding of great enigmas should help explain lesser ones, like the laws of gravity can calculate the fall of an object, but these answers haven't done something useful. But lesser questions have been answered with lesser and less interesting answers, and they successfully predicted stuff. Through answering many small questions, we now know why rain happens, why the seasons change, or how eels and flies come into existence. And the domain of the great mysteries was reduced, bit by bit.

Trying to answer the great mysteries, like the origin of existence, is building a house from the roof. Religious experiences and the numinous can be better explained by psychiatry and medicine than by theology.

There might still be something not more, but greater, than our understanding. It is probable, since our intuition and our senses are limited. But if there is, it would be equal to a colour we don't see due to lacking color cones. We might be unable to intuitively explain how it's like to see color to a colorblind person, but it's not divine or magical, greater than the material world and what we can measure and calculate; it's just greater than our eyes or our vocabulary.

That is at least my belief. It was hard to write somewhat concisely my beliefs, but I think I did a good enough job. I must say I'm not opposed to trying to answer the great mysteries, it's very similar to when the ancient greek philosophers tried to find the origin of matter. But I do not believe real truth can be obtained that way.

Also, I must say that your comments in this post were great. A perspective very different to the common HN point of view, thought-provoking and in-depth. I also learned the word numinous, which makes me happy as I have now a word to describe something I couldn't before.

> There are better ways of squaring the circle, but they're less sexy.

Don't tell me: You learned of these ways from the one True Scotsman.

Doubtful. Sean Connery has been dead for several years now.

Surely that doesn't really matter to any skilled occultist.

Well they don't involve sex and drugs, or questionable attitudes towards women.

What's wrong with exploring one's spirituality and self through drugs and sex? Questionable attitudes I understand, but 2 out of 3 seem fine to me.

Because it inevitably becomes about the drugs and sex, and not the spirituality.

I'd prefer if you actually made an argument to support that this happens, because this simply does not match my experience at all. And you just asserting otherwise doesn't change that.

And why won't you reveal what this wonderful method of "squaring the circle" is, since you seem so confident in its superiority? You're coming off quite smug about it, without providing any substance to back it up.

Methods plural. I'm sorry if I'm coming off as smug - what I'm trying to get across is that a lot of people who have been failed by western religions in their desire for the numinous, and an understanding of how on earth it relates to everyday reality, can come across Crowley and buy into his approach. But actually, they might find that their own religious traditions have something that can do the job. Catholicism has a very serviceable mystical tradition, for example, even if things like Thomism and the persecution of the Beguines and the Quietists helped to make it less obvious.

Ok, I think I see where you're coming from. I think we're operating with a somewhat different idea of what the spiritual or numinous necessarily is or has to be. For me, mysticism was never all that appealing, regardless of what tradition it came from. I guess the mystic whose thought I'm most familiar with is Terence Mckenna, but I always ingested his thought with a sort of mysticism filter applied. I thought he had a lot of deep insights into some of the deeper paradoxes of our cultural fabric, and how they're illuminated by entheogenic drugs, but then he always had to go to some kind of crazy shamanistic new age crackpot place with it.

To me, the spiritual is more about integrating the internal world with the external, the present with our evolutionary past, the individual with the collective, the irrational and primal with the rational and civilised.

In my younger years, I was very judgemental of religion; I just didn't see any value, and saw it merely as obsolete intellectual baggage. I felt a distinct superiority from being free of this epistemic crutch. This actually changed over night when I took psychedelics for the first time(AMT, if anyone's curious). I had a powerful religious experience, felt a presence, "the love of god shining down on me", whatever the cliches are people use to describe experiences like this. This didn't affect my atheism, strengthened it if anything, but it did show me some of the value the religious find in their beliefs, and I gained a lot of respect for them. It also exposed one of the fundamental human paradoxes I mentioned above, namely the relationship between the internal world and the external world. And I've found drugs helpful in exploring that tension, as well as other tensions like some of the cultural delusions we all inevitably believe in one form or another.

Sex(the wilder the better) is similar in the sense that it makes nakedly(ha) obvious the fundamental paradox between being an animal and living in a civilisation. After all, how can you understand the human experience without first understanding the animal experience upon which it is built?

I could go on about this, but it's getting long winded, so I hope that sheds some light on why I think drugs and sex are valid "spiritual tools". There are many others too for sure. Like art, for instance. And not every tool is for everyone, of course.

I do agree that overt focus on one tool or perspective(I.e only living like an animal) can often lead one astray, and I've certainly gone astray myself. But I don't think it's inevitable. I think they more easily lead people astray when they end up in bubbles, like you hinted at. There's a process that's sort of analogous to how groups in social media end up being echo chambers with extreme views. I think this is a direct consequence of taboos built into Western society causing various groups too strongly self-isolate.

I get where you're coming from too, I've read plenty of RA Wilson for example, and the Autonomedia stuff.

I'd argue there are other ways of confronting the "animal" as you put it, but I have to leave the house now. Good talking.

Hiking is a good one, or just spending time in nature in general. I try to do it a little every day. One of the most powerful such experiences I had was walking home from work one day for 45 minutes in intense rain and cold winds, wearing nothing but a T-shirt and shorts, because the weather was nice enough in the morning. It felt terrible for 5 minutes, then I just sort of accepted my predicament and surrendered, followed by a hefty adrenaline rush, and walked home calmly with a big grin on my face, absolutely drenched. Onlookers must've thought I was completely off my rocker, which to be fair is at least partially true...

It can be very freeing to just surrender to nature some times.

Though I don't necessarily recommend trying this at home, especially if you're immuno-compromised.

As regards the drugs and sex, I'm speaking from personal experience of people I've known. Easy enough to google "Tantra Scandal" and find examples, but you could argue that plenty of individuals in mainstream religions have abused their authority in a similar way. I'd argue that it's more prevalent in the places focused directly on sex and drugs, but I don't have a study of any sort to back me up.

I think that would probably be impossible to quantify. Would you consider amount of sexual abuse per religion, per believer, per cleric, or what? And, of course, reliable historical data on sexual abuse is unavailable.

I think your impression is likely a result of “deviance amplification”—-i.e, hearing about all the bad shit that goes on in more obscure religions, and taking that as indicative of prevalence.

The only book by Crowly I would recommend is "Diary of a Drug Fiend", in which he gets into drugs, has a great time in the first half of the book. In the second half he is addicted, crashes and burns. The rest of his work is utter nonsense and as you say, sophistry.

As opposed to the guy that moved there to a house on Loch Ness...

Stepping over the general LHP/RHP question that you’re driving at, I’ll expand on this:

> Someone asked why Crowley is perennially popular on HN. It's because his approach appeals to people who have experienced enough religion to understand that there is something there, but are struggling to reconcile it with our culture's dominant scientific materialism, because they're bright enough to want to try to. "The method of science, the aim of religion". A lot of HN matches that demographic.

Hackish culture was playful, irreverent, simultaneously creative and destructive, competitive, and elitist (in a word: adolescent). Being part of it felt like sorcery, like you were finding and pulling strings others couldn’t see. I think there’s a heavy psychological crossover between the kind of people who got into that and into occultism, the kind of people who really like the idea of hidden power and taking control of the world around them. That’s also why you see the same people drawn to transhumanism, etc.

Tangentially, how much that culture still exists, I’m not really sure. I think most subcultures have ossified into collections of shibboleths without the creative power that formed them, even subsumed into the same global culture as a mere consumer aesthetic.

> the kind of people who really like the idea of hidden power and taking control of the world around them. That’s also why you see the same people drawn to transhumanism, etc.

Good point - actually not just a case of hidden power but also the sense of wonder at a hidden universe beyond what the eyes could see. Yeah, good shout.

I avoided Sam Harris for the longest time due to some interviews of him that I had heard before, but I started listening to his meditation instruction recently, and it's by far the best I've ever heard for bridging the gap between traditional mysticism and modern secularism.

I've not heard of him - I'll have a look. This may not apply to him, but what I'm wary of is anything that makes the practice a personal improvement exercise - it has to reach for the heavens and encourage empathic love for other people, or it'll end up in the wrong place, IMO.

That’s quite demanding. If one is in a dark place then one surely must first light one’s own path before reaching out?

Augh, sorry about the horrible poetics.

What I meant to say there is IMO nothing wrong in utilizing meditative practice for mental self-help and relaxation.

Just trying to survive in a bleak world without going insane is not evil, even though the level of - um, “enlightenment” you remain at is “not depressed”.

Fair enough. But there's a lot to be said for finding meaning in helping other people.

You should listen to him then, he talks exactly about this - that meditation is not meant to be a personal improvement practice, but to fundamentally change your life. He also covers metta, which is "loving-kindness" meditation, which is basically empathy practice.

I recommend Shinzen Young in addition.

He's great as well, yes. One of the leaders in making buddhist meditation accessible to a western audience. Also Michael Taft.

Many a modern individual has lost the community of 5 decades prior, a station occupied by the community church in many parts and more fixed abodes, and so strive beyond optimistic humanism to a thirst to believe in anything and anyone. Barking up the wrong tree when it is connecting with themselves and their neighbor that is missing and not depressive bibliomania, hypergrafia, or wandering the internet for flat earth conventions for connection conflated with meaning and sense of purpose.

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