I was not content to believe in a personal devil and serve him, in the ordinary sense of the word. I wanted to get hold of him personally and become his chief of staff.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a desire to not only acknowledge the existence of evil but to actively engage with it and understand its nature.
Aleister Crowley's quote reflects a deep curiosity and fascination with the darker aspects of existence, challenging the conventional understanding of good and evil. Rather than simply accepting the notion of a personal devil as a metaphorical concept, Crowley seeks to personify and comprehend the essence of evil, suggesting that true understanding requires direct interaction with it rather than passive belief. This perspective invites discussion on the complexities of morality and the human condition.
In practice
In a college debate on morality, this quote can highlight the pursuit of knowledge in understanding evil.
People think that talking is a sign of thinking. It isn't, for the most part' on the contrary, it's a mechanical dodge of the body to relieve oneself of the strain of thinking, just as exercising the muscles helps the body to become temporarily unconscious of its weight, its pain, its weariness, and the foreknowledge of its doom.
There is a single main definition of the object of all magical Ritual. It is the uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm. The Supreme and Complete Ritual is therefore the Invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel; or, in the language of Mysticism, Union with God.
Magick is the Science of understanding oneself and one's conditions. It is the Art of applying that understanding in action.
I do not want to father a flock, to be the fetish of fools and fanatics or the founder of a faith whose followers are content to echo my opinions. I want each man to cut his own way through the jungle.
It will be seen that the formula - 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law' has nothing to do with 'Do as you please.' It is much more difficult to comply with the Law of Thelema than to follow out slavishly a set of dead regulations.
The essence of independence has been to think and act according to standards from within, not without.
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
Our challenge is to join forces of the old and the new- experience and experiment, history and destiny, the world of man and the new world of science- but always in accordance with the never-changing word of God.
A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous.
Intellectual generalities are always interesting, but generalities in morals mean absolutely nothing.
Estrangement shows itself precisely in the elimination of distance between people.
The few surviving Armenians no longer ask to go home. They do not ask for restitution. They ask simply to have the memory of their obliteration acknowledged. It is a moral obsession, the lonely legacy passed onto the third and fourth generation who no longer speak Armenian but who carry within them the seeds of resentment that will not be quashed.
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