The ‘Worst Man in the World’ Tells the Astounding Story of His Life in Articles by Aleister Crowley.

“At school I had passions for poetry and chemistry. I had an instinct for chess; experience rapidly proved my ability. I never lost to anyone until—at Cambridge—I met H. E. Atkins, seven years running amateur champion of Britain.” [via, also]

Consider also:

  1. “The man who, having practiced strange rites, becomes a drunkard or a drug-fiend, is evidently a failure as a magician. He has lost his grip.”
  2. “Any one who has any experience of any mystical state of the soul knows how there float up in the mind profound symbols, whose meaning, if indeed they do not delude one into the dream that they are meaningless, one does not perhaps understand for years.”
  3. “I would have thee to know that Spiritual Experience and Perfection have no necessary connection with Advancement in our Holy Order”
  4. “these Passions in ourselves which we understand to be Hindrances are not part of our True Will, but diseased Appetites, manifest in us through false early Training.”
  5. “The HATI is always spoken of in Egyptian texts as associated with the AB or Heart. Just as we, in our conversation, often confuse and combine our instinct and will.”