The forces of good were those which had constantly oppressed me. I saw them daily destroying the happiness of my fellow-men. Since, therefore, it was my business to explore the spiritual world, my first step must be to get into personal communication with the devil.
Aleister Crowley, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, Chapter 14
These, dear girl, are for you. They form this pleasant book. Now strip yourself and get a candle; lunge in front of a looking-glass and read and frig alternately. If you are grown up, a dog or a man to suck you saves labour—of any sort—and time. But I want you to swim in a perfect ocean of fuck as you read—and please God if we ever meet—what ho!
Aleister Crowley, Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden, Prologue
That poem of Browning owes much of its haunting charm to this very circumstance, that the reader is never told who Childe Roland is, or why he wants to get to the Dark Tower, or what he expects to find when he does get there. There is a skillfully constructed atmosphere of Giants, and Ogres, and Hunchbacks, and the rest of the apparatus of fairy-tales; but there is no trace of the influence of Bædeker in the style. Now this is really very irritating to anybody who happens to be seriously concerned to get to that tower. I remember, as a boy, what misery I suffered over this poem. Had Browning been alive, I think I would have sought him out, so seriously did I take the Quest.
Aleister Crowley, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Liber LXXI, The Voice of the Silence
