Author’s Note: Seems those frothing at the mouth about AI have won. This will be the final article that comes to Substack first. From here on out, Substack will be dead last in getting any articles I currently write if they get them at all. I’m looking for alternatives and would be happy to explore anything that doesn’t cost me through the nose (Free and without the social aspects would be preferrable) and I’m thinking I might just take this whole thing newsletter style. Let me know in the comments if you’d be interested. Also, this contains no cover image and the rest, I don’t care what your suspicions are. Read, Don’t. Subscribe. Don’t. I no longer care.

To the Anti-AI crowd, if you’re not celebrating your victory, I know where you stand.

I am going to tell you a story that is, probably the absolute most wild story I’ve heard that has happened on our planet just over one hundred years ago.

None of this is a joke, this is all very real and, those familiar with The Golden Dawn’s techniques, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

The rest of you need to look up the following because they will be pertinent to this topic today:

The Kabbalistic Cross (Catholics will know this one…in a sense)

The Lesser Banishing Ritual of The Pentagram

The Middle Pillar Ritual

The Hexagram Ritual.

These are important to the context of the story I’m about to tell you and it’s supremely wild stuff.

Let’s go back to Cambridge in 1906.

A poet named Victor is in his dorm room at Trinity College. A man shows up to his room, unannounced and identifies Victor as a potential chela. If you’re not familiar with the term, a chela is what a student is referred to in some occult circles and the word derives from sanskrit and literally translates to “servant” or “slave” and you’ll see why this is particularly of interest later.

The man in question was a warlock and the warlock described his potential student as "faddish, incurably lazy, and lacking in self-discipline, as well as inhibited and nervous." That didn’t stop him from moving in in order to groom Victor “for the benefit of the Order and himself.”

Fear not, folks this story get more strange from here.

In 1907, Victor is initiated into The Order as a probationer. He’s named Frater Omnia Vincam, a name that means “I Will Conquer All.” Victor, at this point, probably believes that the name is reflective of his own spiritual conquest.

Summer, 1908: Victor is taken by his teacher on a grueling trek across the Pyrenees and down through Spain. Victor collapses from illness and exhaustion in Madrid. They push on to Gibraltar and cross to Tangiers. I thought this warlock described Victor as “incurably lazy” and “lacking self-discipline.” If that’s the case, why would you take someone like that through three countries over that kind of distance?

Simple…break down any physical baseline for resistance.

June 1909: Victor leaves Cambridge. Goes to an estate on Loch Ness. There, his teacher puts him in a "Magical Retirement." It’s isolation in a specially prepared chamber. Ten days. The conditions: extreme discomfort. Little food. Made to sleep naked on a bed of gorse (that’s thorns) for a week. Victor was cold, hungry, sleep-deprived and his teacher was scourging him for not making magickal progress in days that it takes years to make.

By now, Victor has accepted that discomfort equals growth, that pain equals initiation, that what his teacher demands is sacred, and that resistance is weakness. You can pretty much already see where this is heading, however, I assure you, your trend analysis has no power here unless you’re already familiar with this story.

It’s time we go to November of 1909 where this fanatical warlock teacher is now taking his student into territory that the rest of us would describe as singularly insane. Strap in, folks, this is gonna get super-hairy.

Now first, we have to center on Victor’s teacher. Victor’s teacher was actually in Mexico nine years earlier. He’d taken his journey through the first two Aethyrs and he wanted to finish the rest.

I have to explain something to those who don’t know what they’re looking at. The Circle that is cast, yes, sometimes it is literally drawn out. Other times, depends on the practitioner but in this case both The Circles and The Triangle of Art were drawn on the desert floor. What this is supposed to do is protect the operating magician standing inside the circle while the Triangle, placed outside of the circle, contains the entity that is summoned. An athame is a spiritual weapon and it’s used to cut energies away and banish them. It can be used for invocations as well but it’s best to be used for banishings and of course, circle casting. It’s also used to keep something at bay if it threatens the circle.

You need to know that because the story I tell you next is absolutely real, it is documented and it’s as wild as anything you could put into a fantasy novel and it involves these very techniques.

Victor and his teacher arrive in Algeria by ship and then make the trek right into the Sahara. This takes awhile and they do go through a few cities, civilized areas and things like that. Victor is exhausted from the “magical retirement” and now he’s on another punishing trek through the desert where, during the day, the temperatures are brutal and at night, they’re freezing.

What Victor’s mission is is to be the scribe. His teacher just landed in Algeria and already, he’s having visionary states. They haven’t even gotten into the desert yet.

Flags just don’t get any more red than this, right? Well…

His teacher is reciting the Qu’ran to steady himself, continuously intoning magickal formulae. The extremes in temperature are doing the rest on Victor. Also, on top of all of that, walking for miles with nothing but empty horizons in every direction.

According to Alex Owen, this entire scene "a state of almost overwhelming spiritual intensity" before any formal ritual begins.

This thing was already going off the rails if it hadn’t already.

Victor is walking beside him. Carrying supplies. Acting as scribe.

He was already exhausted from the conditioning in Loch Ness months earlier. He’s packing everything and he’s the scribe.

Think: Unpaid Intern. This is what that looks like in the occult world over a century ago.

Victor found himself in a desert, in a foreign country, with no support network, following a man who's already dissolving into visionary states before the work had officially started.

This is where the story takes a hard turn.

Victor’s teacher, the warlock, has taken him out into The Sahara desert.

On November 23, 1909, this is where our story really begins.

Everything else was a prelude to it. Get ready.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, the teacher and warlock is none other than Aleister Crowley.

If you recall in the article We Need To Have A Serious Talk About Crowley, I selected the passage called Skidoo (Chapter 23, follow along) from The Book of Lies that I was drawn to and mentioned that it went from funny to unfunny very quickly.

Crowley’s extractive model that I talked about being the extreme logical conclusion? Keep that in mind.

The Sahara Desert.

November 23, 1909.

First, if you want to know the Aethyrs and what that looks like, I won’t reproduce the entire thing here. I’ll hit highlights and let you look into this story the same way I did. This may sound unbelievable but the events actually occurred and the sources are Crowley’s own publication The Voice And The Vision (Liber CCCXVIII), Alex Owen, The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern (University of Chicago Press, 2004), Chapter 6: “Aleister Crowley in the Desert.” and finally, “Aleister Crowley in the Desert,” Thelemagick Library (tarrdaniel.com). Further, The Golden Dawn by Israel Regardie does have the Call to The Thirty Aethyrs which you can read yourself on pages 854 - 856 of the Seventh Edition.

They’re numbered 30 (outermost) down to 1 (innermost), like layers of an onion.

Mexico, 1900 — The First Two:

• 30th Aethyr — TEX

• 29th Aethyr — RII

These are the outermost layers. They’re the easiest to access. Crowley scryed them and then set the work aside for nine years.

Algeria, November-December 1909 — The Remaining 28:

• 28th — BAG through 15th — Scryed Nov 23-Dec 3 across Aumale, Sidi Aissa, Ain el Hajel, Bou Saada

• 14th — UTA (”Shrine of Darkness”) — Dec 3, Mount Da’leh Addin. The angel appears, the first sex magick working with Neuburg

Yes, you read that correctly. It was at this point in the ritual that Neuburg was to then channel Pan. Something that bears mentioning, Crowley had Neuburg’s head shaved save for the hair at his temples which was styled into satyr horns.

During this ritual, done on top of a hill using stones as a makeshift temple and Crowley offered himself as a “sacrifice” to Pan (through Neuburg) and Neuburg went through with it. Use your imagination. That actually happened.

For those of you who need it explicitly stated: Crowley caught, Neuburg pitched. That’s not hyperbole.

• 13th, 12th, 11th — Dec 3-5, immediately continuing with no rest

• 10th — ZAX (The Abyss) — Dec 6. Choronzon encounter. The big one.

This is the one we need to talk about. This is where things went from bad to absolutely horrific.

Crowley stayed inside The Triangle of Art during the proceedings. I would never recommend doing that. The Triangle of Art is where you summon spirits of any stripe and the Triangle acts as a mystical holding cell while you interrogate them. If the circle (drawn or cast) is broken or disrupted, that’s a huge issue.

Neuburg was inside the circle, Crowley was in the Triangle and Choronzon had entered him. This is where reports get a little divergent because the record is corrupted.

In version A which comes from Crowley himself in The Vision And The Voice, Crowley stepped into The Triangle in order to become the vessel for Choronzon. Choronzon spoke through Crowley.

In version B which is the scholarly version, by Alex Owen, the original notebook pages for this working are torn out from Crowley's own journal. There's no way to verify what happened because the primary documentation is deliberately destroyed or withheld. In short, the story suffers a bit from the Unreliable Narrator issue.

Version C is probably the most exciting version of this and I’ll recount it here. Neuburg was inside the circle. That much is factual. Choronzon manifested as formless/changing forms, attempted to distract and break Neuburg. Neuburg had to defend himself with the dagger and the staff.

Now we get to business.

Crowley/Choronzon had been in the triangle. Neuburg held the line inside the circle. Choronzon had reportedly attempted to seduce Neuburg as a beautiful woman. It didn’t work. Choronzon had tried several tactics that failed until, he began quoting philosophy and occult secrets.

This prompted Neuburg to begin writing it all down as much as he could. He was the scribe, that was his job. While he’s writing things down, Choronzon is tossing handfuls of sand over the circles drawn on the desert floor. Choronzon breaks out of the triangle, into the circle and he begins battling Neuburg.

There was a literal life-and-death struggle in the middle of the Sahara desert between an edgelord Warlock who could back it all up and Victor Neuburg, his student.

Neuburg had to use the ritual dagger to defend himself.

Remember what I said about being alone, isolated, no support system and just Crowley? Yeah, well Neuburg also had specific instructions from his teacher…to kill him if he presented a threat.

…so at least Crowley had that much sense.

Now, Victor was faced with all of the above plus the potential death of his teacher.

The battle was fought until Neuburg had both the dagger and the staff in hand, at which Choronzon shrank back into the triangle, Neuburg could repair both the triangle and the circle and continue.

That’s right…there was a literal Wizard Battle fought on this plane in our recorded history. Let that sink in.

• 9th through 1st — Dec 7-20, walking toward Biskra, 100+ mile trek

• 3rd — ZON — Lilith vision, Crowley screams “Kill me!”

• 2nd — ARN — Breaks him. Body asserts against the vision. Has to pause.

• 1st — LIL — Dec 20. Profound peace. Horus revealed as Lord of the Æon.

The descent goes from outer/most accessible to inner/most intense. By the time he hit the 10th (the Abyss), he was deep enough that Choronzon manifested. Everything past that point was increasingly destabilizing until the 1st brought resolution.

When I stated that we needed to have a serious talk about Crowley, this is why. His antics have done a great disservice to the world of Magick as it is.

The thing people need to keep in mind here is that Crowley had inherited wealth, no oversight, no accountability, and a student he'd conditioned for three years. This article was not a cautionary tale about magic but more of a cautionary tale about power without constraint.

The magic just made it look extraordinary enough that people forgot to ask whether it was abuse.

Subscribe now