Crowley was, in no particular order, a genius, a pederast, a talented poet, a raving madman, certainly the most accomplished magician of the 20th century, a drug addict, a Magus, impoverished, a spiritual pioneer, a homosexual, a mystic, a misogynist, a World Teacher….etc, etc., etc. As the above extract shows, even in writing a letter to a student (he did not know they would eventually be published) Crowley produces more insight and data than most occult writers do in a lifetime. In short, when Crowley speaks, we may well find reasons to disagree but we should listen most carefully.

The letter begins with a distinction, the difference between a Black Magician or sorcerer and a Black Brother.(1) Simply put, the Black Magician is simply an occultist who, while skilled in what is usually considered the occult arts such as Goetia, spell casting of various types (including things like talismans etc.) and perhaps necromancy, he uses his abilities for mundane reasons. Note that this is not the same as “evil” or some such moralizing nonsense. It means only that the Black Magician is not using his skill as a means for spiritual progress. Even if our theoretical magician spent his time casting spells to kill some modern day Hitler or only used his powers to help find lost children and puppies, he is still, by this definition a Black Magician. For Crowley, this is a bad thing but one more on a par with a talented artist who only paints derivative and uninspired pictures because he makes a great deal of money rather than daring and original work because he realizes most great artists are not recognized as such while they are alive.

In contrast a Black Brother is an adept, which is to say a magician that has advanced along the path toward the Height, as far as one can go in fact while alive. He comes to the brink of death, or rather the brink of Da'ath, the negative Sephirot which is also the Abyss. Now, the goal of the Magus in Crowley’s system is to transcend the individual life, the egocentric “I” which we identify, wrongly, with our true Self. In order for the Magus to accomplish this transcendence, the ego-self must die. Once the ego-self is destroyed, the True Self, the “star” of ever individual can safely cross the Abyss and be reborn as one with the Universal Life, becoming a member of the Great White Brotherhood. It is here the Adept falters, and becomes a Black Brother. He refuses to slay the ego and shuts himself up – Crowley’s concept of restriction – and holds back some or all of his ego-self. This is essentially Crowley’s description of the goal of every mystic, which is the surrender the self and merge with God or attain Nirvana or whatever.

Crowley then addresses the obvious objection to this scheme, which is the question of how such a thing can take place. After all, in this system, the Adept has already attained the “Knowledge and Conversation” of his Holy Guardian angel which is equivalent to the True Self which is to cross the Abyss. Here Crowley prevaricates. He is not certain of the answer and speculates that the Black Adept abandons his Angel(2). Perhaps he has in his own make a flaw which now manifests at this time and he draws back from the Abyss. In any case, he “makes a false crown of Da'ath”, which is knowledge, against the higher Sephirot which partake in the eternal realm or Pleroma, the “Fullness” of being.

Crowley, to his credit, does not simply choose one of the scenarios he gives for the cause of the Black Brothers “fall” and pronounce it infallible doctrine. It seems, however, that he recognizes that there is the possibility he does not fully understand the phenomena he is discussing. In fact, on this point, we may find cause to disagree. Interestingly, Crowley also makes what may have been a flippant remark regarding the possibility that the Adept did NOT enter into communion with his HGA but instead:
“Perhaps his error was so deeply rooted, from the very beginning, that it was his Evil Genius that he evoked. “

This is an astonishing conjecture. What can it mean? Again, recalling the earlier discussion of the Exempt Adept 7=4 in the Golden Dawn system, he must have attained knowledge and conversation with his Angel. It is the requirement for initiation into the grade 6=5. The Adept, therefore, cannot be an Adept unless he has completed this task so, therefore, his evil genius must be equivalent to the HGA! This leads to a conclusion that will have great import to our study, which is that, clearly, the Evil Genius is the reversion or Qliphotic aspect of the HGA and it is possible to invoke this aspect of the Angel as if it were the HGA. This is only possible because the Evil Genius is the Angel, which is to say, there is no Evil Genius.

If this is true then Crowley, most likely, was reporting an accurate view but from the point of view of an initiate. From another “angle”, if such is possible we expect to find a contrary interpretation; it is not a failure, it is as valid an initiatory path as the Abramelin rite. We must look therefore, to the sources by which we have received the doctrine of the Angel and the attendant metaphysical theories and judge whether the teaching on this subject is open or not to, if not revision, perhaps exegesis and extension. When considering Crowley’s writing on the subject of the Ordeal of the Abyss and the later work by his greatest student, Kenneth Grant, we shall find, I submit, that the interpretation of Crowley is just that, the perspective of an initiate of the Great White Brotherhood. With this knowledge in hand, we can then begin the task of circumscribing the Angel and His being.

1. For Crowley, a Black Brother is a practitioner of the Left Hand path.