About the Book
THREE MASTER WORKS FROM THE OFFICIAL CHURCH OF SATAN READING LIST From the list originally published in Magistra Blanche Barton's The Church of Satan as approved by Magus Anton Szandor LaVey.
THREE CLASSIC TEXTS FOR STUDENTS OF SATANISM AND THE OCCULT:
THE BOOK OF LIES by Aleister Crowley
" "Teach us Your real secret, Master! how to become invisible, how to acquire love, and oh! beyond all, how to make gold." "
The esoteric masterpiece by one of the foremost mystics of all times. As Crowley describes it: "This book deals with many matters on all planes of the very highest importance. It is an official publication for Babes of the Abyss, but is recommended even to beginners as highly suggestive. Chapter 44 of the book describes the ritual named the Mass of the Phoenix.
2014 Amazon reviews:
"A magical collection of cryptic essays infused with irony & hidden truths."
"Required for the bookshelf of anyone who has a passing interest in the occult."
"The Book of Lies," by Aleister Crowley, is a masterpiece of modern occult literature. There are numerous intriguing references: to the Tarot, the Qabala, astrology, Egyptian mythology, the "Left Hand Path," Masonry, the Beast of Revelation, sacred geometry, etc. Crowley's writing is often cryptic, often witty, often elegant. The book is also full of memorable quotes.
Like the most enduring of occult and freethinking writers, Crowley challenges us to refocus our dulled organs of perception, and to rethink our stale mental conventions.
THE ANTI-CHRIST by Friedrich Nietzsche
The Antichrist (also could be translated as The Anti-Christian) was originally published in 1895. It was actually written in 1888 but its controversial content delayed its publication, along with 'Ecce Homo.'
Friedrich Nietzche (1844-1900) wrote The Antichrist (1888) after Thus Spake Zarathustra and shortly before the mental collapse that incapacitated him for the rest of his life. This work is both an unrestrained attack on Christianity and a further exposition of Nietzche's will-to-power philosophy so dramatically presented in Zarathustra. Christianity, says Nietzche, represents "everything weak, low, and botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism towards all the self-preservative instincts of strong life." By contrast, Nietzche defines good as: "All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and power itself in man. What is bad? - All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? - The feeling that power is increasing, - that resistance has been overcome."
'The Antichrist' is the last thing that Nietzsche ever wrote, and so it may be accepted as a statement of some of his most salient ideas in their final form.
NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND Fyodor Dostoevsky
Notes is considered by many to be the first existentialist novel. It presents itself as an excerpt from the rambling memoirs of a bitter, isolated, unnamed narrator (generally referred to by critics as the Underground Man) who is a retired civil servant living in St. Petersburg. The first part of the story is told in monologue form, or the underground man's diary, and attacks emerging Western philosophy. The second part of the book is called "Apropos of the Wet Snow," and describes certain events that, it seems, are destroying and sometimes renewing the underground man, who acts as a first person, unreliable narrator. Written in 1864, this novel is the first and strangest of Dostoevsky's masterpieces--and the source of those that followed. Violating literary conventions in ways never before attempted, this classic tells of a mid-19th-century Russian official's breakaway from society and descent "underground.""
About the Author :
Aleister Crowley (born Edward Alexander Crowley; 12 October 1875) was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer. He was responsible for founding the religion and philosophy of Thelema, in which role he identified himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Aeon of Horus in the early 20th century.
Born to a wealthy Plymouth Brethren family, Crowley rejected this faith to pursue western esotericism, poetry, and mountaineering. He was educated at Cambridge, where he embraced his bisexuality. Some biographers allege that he was recruited by British intelligence there, and that he remained a spy throughout his life. He married Rose Edith Kelly and they traveled to Cairo in 1904. There, Crowley claimed to have been contacted by a supernatural entity named Aiwass, who provided him with The Book of the Law, a sacred text that served as the basis for Thelema.
After an unsuccessful attempt to climb Kanchenjunga, Crowley returned to Britain where, in 1907, he and George Cecil Jones co-founded the AA as a Thelemite order. After spending time in Algeria, he was initiated into the Ordo Templi Orientis in 1912, rising to become the leader of its British branch, which he reformulated in accordance with his Thelemite beliefs. After spending the First World War in the United States, where he worked for British intelligence services to infiltrate the pro-German lobby, in 1920 he moved to Cefalu in Sicily, to run a commune known as the Abbey of Thelema. His libertine lifestyle led to denunciations in the British press, and the Italian government evicted him in 1923. He divided the following two decades between France, Germany, and England, and continued to promote Thelema until his death. Crowley gained widespread notoriety during his lifetime, being a recreational drug experimenter, and an individualist social critic. As a result, he was denounced in the popular press as "the wickedest man in the world" and erroneously labelled a Satanist. Crowley has remained a highly influential figure over western esotericism and the counter-culture, and continues to be recognised as a prophet in Thelema. In 2002, a BBC poll ranked him as the seventy-third greatest Briton of all time."
