Being the One: A Primary Biological Pathogen

Crowley, Castaneda & the Guru Vampire Problem

(A free post, inspired by/extracted from the last Sons of Job meet.)

There is in me a nostalgic longing for primal life force experience.

Aleister Crowley (whose swamp of a life I’m obliged to wade back into for the Vice of Kings new edition) ended up believing his destiny, his mission, was to transform the world, and that he was going to do it through fucking.

Wherever I got it, I literally had that same program running my consciousness from mid-twenties to mid-thirties. I was “the One,” Lucifer’s avatar, my mission to transform the world, and I would do it through fucking. It’s in William Blake, read from a certain angle.1

If you look at all these gurus—the men at least—the pattern is always the same: not only do they fuck all the women they can, they emasculate the men by getting them to stop having sex, then have sex with the women the men aren’t allowed to have sex with anymore.

It’s there in Castaneda, it’s there in John de Ruiter. It’s what primates do: the biggest one dominates the others and then steals all their mates (or dominates them by stealing their mates). It’s like a biological pathogen, devouring the life force.

For a human being who is not a primate, but made in the image of God, fallen into disembodiment, the desire for sex becomes a pathological drive for the fallen, false identity to feel real. Just as murderers feel alive by killing, there is a continuum between the sexual predator and the killer.

Without going all the way to the extreme of serial killers, sexual predation leads to death and destruction. Some of Castaneda’s women died; at least one of de Ruiter’s female followers died; and Crowley’s Cefalù period resulted in two deaths (one of an infant child) and a miscarriage.

If somebody claims they benefited from these teachers, can anyone say they didn’t? I can say, “You think you did, but you haven’t really. This is siddhis and psychic fragmentation and dissociation. Just you wait, my friend.”

But how do I know it’s not sour grapes, because it didn’t work for me? I can look back on my thirties and see I was way ahead of myself now, in this particular context. I was an astral Übermensch! So what’s my trajectory and what’s my orientation? The appeal of Crowley and Castaneda and John de Ruiter, and even Dave Oshana, of any guru, is the sense they give us of a clear cognitive idea about what we’re doing, why we’re here, what the goal is. It’s reassuring and comforting.

But suppose there are entities who want the guru to fuck—or just gather followers—as much as possible, to harvest the energy of the life force? Crowley goes into every gory detail in his magical diary; every obscenity is charted and framed within this or that magical working. It’s all justified in his mind by the grand magical “Opus.”

Crowley would probably even have admitted that entities were using him as a means to harvest life force energy. “Yes, but—they’re gods. I’m serving my gods.” But look at how he ended up, at the train wreck of his life! Same with Castaneda. In the end, that’s the only thing to look at.

This is what I have to remind myself. My life is relatively healthy, wholesome—goats, grapes, chickens, sheds, ordinary things. I don’t have lots of dead women in my past (only two dead dogs and an injured cat—see Vice of Kings). I gave up the dream of being the One—a pretty big dream—but my life isn’t a train wreck because of it. (It might have been with that best-seller.) I’m not smashing eggs everywhere I go and claiming to be making omelets.

I need reminding of this, because part of me is thinking, maybe I got it wrong? Maybe I was supposed to be the One and didn’t have the stomach for it? It’s very insidious, this “end justifies the means” mentality, this idea that spirituality is supposed to be epic, cosmic, heroic, and will transform the world (and include loads of sex).

I am seeking the balance between the Gnostic and the Christian way—just the right amount of humility without abandoning autonomy. Faith + hubris. Settling for less. We’re not God in this Crowley-Castaneda way. Yet God’s will comes through us, it cannot be imposed upon us. We are God in some sense, not through will or desire, but through surrender.

Thanks for reading. This is a free post made possible by paying subscribers. Consider becoming one.

1 “For the cherub with his flaming brand is hereby commanded to leave his guard at tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite, and holy where it now appears finite & corrupt. This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.” (Marriage of Heaven and Hell.)