Aleister Crowley is a shocking personality, magician and sorcerer, poet and mountaineer, writer and troublemaker. He has been to Russia more than once and even left impressions about it. Russia influenced him, he saw salvation in her.
Petersburg
When Aleister Crowley was 23 years old, he published a collection of poems "Jezabel" at his own expense. Crowley's name was not on the book, it was the name of Vladimir Svareff. Crowley took such a pseudonym, frankly Russian-like, for the simple reason that he had been on vacation in St. Petersburg for a long time. Crowley described this first trip to Russia as follows: "it (the trip) performed a miracle, greatly expanding my worldview." Crowley visited Petersburg again in 1910, but this time the Northern Capital did not make such an impression on Crowley as it did on his first visit.
Moscow
In 1913, Crowley got acquainted with Moscow, he came here with a tour of the violin troupe “The Ragged Ragtime Girls”, spent six weeks marked with great creative upsurge: he wrote the “Gnostic Mass” and completed one of his most famous poems, “Hymn to Pan” … Impressions of the city find poetic expression in the work "City of God". Its name refers to the main work of St. Augustine. The opus was written about Moscow and Moscow. Crowley's attitude to Moscow is very interesting, this city fascinates him, but leaves a lot of mysteries. The Kremlin, in his opinion, is "the embodiment of a dream inspired by hashish." “The Kremlin is an accident. Moscow itself is an accident. There was not the slightest geographical prerequisite for the emergence of this city, just as there was not the slightest advantage in its location. Judge for yourself: a small river,almost half the size of Harlem or Thames near London Bridge, and a hill comparable in size to Morningside or Ludgate Hill. More about Moscow: “It is not calculated in advance, it does not obey the“laws of art”. She is capriciously despotic, like God, and just as undeniable. It was not born of human consciousness: it is a creation of reason, originally free from the dogma of the exact sciences; it is a play of the imagination embodied in metal and stone. This is the absurdity in which Tertullian believed. "originally free from the dogma of the exact sciences. This is a play of the imagination, embodied in metal and stone. This is the absurdity in which Tertullian believed. "originally free from the dogma of the exact sciences. This is a play of the imagination, embodied in metal and stone. This is the absurdity in which Tertullian believed."
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Russian holiness
Crowley's essay on Russia is imbued with an awareness of the importance of Russian holiness as the last frontier of the spirit. Crowley admires Russians, writes with great respect about the ability of Russians to spiritual exaltation. “A Russian during prayer and a Russian during a drunken brawl is an equally instructive sight. He drinks to become drunk, in mental anguish realizing, like Buddha, the limitations of life - the only difference is that one sees sadness in change, while the other seeks change as a cure for sadness. Ultimately, his amusement is a latent desire for death, or at least insanity. He constantly struggles with his eternal enemy - life, striving to achieve a state in which its conventions no longer cause fear and other strong emotions."
St. Basil's Cathedral
St. Basil's Cathedral was considered by Aleister Crowley the best of all temples. A quarter of his essay is written about this cathedral. “The Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed (why not say the Church of Basilisk?) Is the resolution of Plato's antinomy of the One and the Universal. No two domes are alike - neither in color, nor in shape, nor in mutual arrangement. Everyone confirms the idea of unity in diversity, and diversity in unity; each is a mathematical confirmation of the identity of form and content; it is the embodiment of the mystery of the Rosicrucians; it contains the solution to the problem of the alchemists; it contains a square inscribed in a circle; it contains a doubled cube; it contains eternal motion in a motionless stone; it has stable variability and changeable stability; it contains the cornerstone-Christ, laid by Hermes, and the seal of Hiram-Abif, crowning the temple”.
Cathedral of Christ the Savior
Quite the opposite is Crowley's opinion about another Moscow temple - the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. “The gaze is lost in these dark crayfish, never reaching the spire of the divine instrument, which starts from the bend, however, very small, of the roof. As a result, an unpleasant and repulsive impression is created: the emptiness breaks and "eats up" the form, making the building look like a magical mouth of an abyss with golden fangs, an abyss that sucks in and exterminates the soul. balance. Only the faces, hands and feet of the figures depicted in the icons remain open; covers, made of gold or gilded silver and abundantly "embroidered" with pearls and other precious stones, fill the entire remaining canvas."
Russian suffering and Dostoevsky
Aleister Crowley finds particular inspiration in the study of Russian suffering. “For Russians, suffering is something that can be observed but not felt. They view the difficult trials that have befallen them as some kind of experiment of God on man and accept them, believing that the highest end justifies any means. Hence a special mindset that can find joy in sorrow and sadness in joy. Hence the capacity for long suffering, side by side with violent ferocity, tenderness bordering on cruelty. The Great Reason finds its embodiment in striving for extremes. This is the philosophy of Chinese Taoism in practice, and at the same time it is the antithesis of the idea of being able to achieve everything without doing anything. Without interrupting Russian suffering, Crowley also perceives Dostoevsky's work, in which he sees a special sadomasochistic passion.
X lysty
Aleister Crowley received much in his teaching from the whips. It was this sect that was characterized by a certain mystical extremism inherent in many of Crowley's rituals. The cult of suffering, torture of the flesh, practiced with whips, was adopted by Crowley; ritual self-torture turns into erotic tension in his rituals, and Eros is resolved by dazzling pain. Here we are dealing with eroticism, which has nothing to do with "sado-maso" in the profane perception. This is a deep and serious topic, which should be closely studied.