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I have sincerely been asked this question just a couple of times. Firstly, where does this aspect of Crowley's reputation come from?
The erroneous popular idea of equating Aleister Crowley with Satanism is based, partially, on his own tendency to hyperbole and rebellion against (most) expressions of bourgeois morality--and the satanic myth is also perpetuated by Establishment apologists who simply can not tolerate the basic insistence on INDIVIDUAL SPIRITUAL FREEDOM proclaimed in Crowley's vision of Scientific Illuminism....FAQ at The Gnostic Pagan Tradition
Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) contributed greatly to the "magical revival,” as it has been called, during the first half of the 20th Century. His written works have had a profound effect on the practice of Magick. In addition, Satanism, as currently practiced by the Church of Satan and similar groups, have relied heavily on a sensationalistic interpretation of his writings. There are even marks of his influence in the writings of Gerald Gardner, the individual most responsible for the recreation of Wicca circa 1950.Unfortunately, many conservative Christian authors have associated Crowley's beliefs and practices with Mediaeval Satanism. The latter was a form of Satan worship that did not exist in reality. The Christian church invented it in order to provide the theological and legal justification for the Witch burnings of Western Europe. Because of this association, most of the writings by Fundamentalist and other Evangelical Christians about the Law of Thelema and Crowley are hopelessly inaccurate, and may be safely ignored.
Editor's Note to The Law of Thelema, by Alexander Duncan
ReligiousTolerance.org
Let's consider what Crowley
wrote regarding Satan or the devil:
The devil does not exist. It is a false name invented by the Black Brothers to imply a Unity in their ignorant muddle of dispersions. A devil who had unity would be a God. ["The Devil" is, historically, the God of any people that one personally dislikes....]ALEISTER CROWLEY
Liber ABA (Book 4): Magick; Part III: Magick in Theory & Practice; Cap. XXI: Of Black Magick; of Pacts with the Devil; of the Main Types of the Operations of Magick Art; of Necromancy; and of the Powers of the Sphinx
(Boldface not added.)
This "Devil" is called Satan or Shaitan, and regarded with horror by people who are ignorant of his formula, and, imagining themselves to be evil, accuse Nature herself of their own phantasmal crime. Satan is Saturn, Set, Abrasax, Adad, Adonis, Attis, Adam, Adonai, etc. The most serious charge against him is only that he is the Sun in the South. The Ancient Initiates, dwelling as they did in lands whose blood was the water of the Nile or the Euphrates, connected the South with life-withering heat, and cursed that quarter where the solar darts were deadliest. Even in the legend of Hiram, it is at high noon that he is stricken down and slain. Capricornus is moreover the sign which the Sun enters when he reaches his extreme Southern declination at the Winter Solstice, the season of the death of vegetation, for the folk of the Northern hemisphere. This gave them a second cause for cursing the south.... But to us, aware of astronomical facts, this antagonism to the South is a silly superstition which the accidents of their local conditions suggested to our animistic ancestors.ALEISTER CROWLEY
Liber ABA (Book 4): Magick; Part III: Magick in Theory & Practice; Cap. V: The Formula of I.A.O.
Even Satanists may object to Crowley's being
perceived as a Satanist:
Crowley was not technically a Satanist. He certainly did not he see himself as one. It should be pointed out that Crowley did see Thelema as a religion to replace Christianity and its moral codes. Crowley was not a Satanist or a devil worshipper.
But Crowley apparently encouraged and enjoyed a "blackened" reputation. There may be a few reasons for this, and one of them may have been to weed out the insincere and the superficial in a manner similar to one he described in a piece of his fiction:
The men who are willing... to become the saviours of their country shall be called the Synagogue of Satan, so as to keep themselves from the friendship of the fools who mistake names for things.ALEISTER CROWLEY
Thien Tao or the Synagogue of Satan, Sub Figura XLI
The context of this quote is illuminating as to further intentions behind this exploration of defiance of superficial conventions and comfortable images:
The laws of the physical world are precisely paralleled by those of the moral and intellectual sphere....To the bigot I commend a course of Thomas Henry Huxley; to the infidel a practical study of ceremonial magic. Then, when the bigot has knowledge and the infidel faith, each may follow without prejudice his natural inclination; for he will no longer plunge into his former excesses....
But what of the Great Tao? By solitude and fasting for the social and luxurious, by drunkenness and debauch for the austere, by scourging for those afraid of physical pain, by repose for the restless, and toil for the idle, by bull-fights for the humanitarian, and the care of little children for the callous, by rituals for the rational, and by philosophy for the credulous, shall these men, while yet unbalanced, seek to attain to unity with the great Tao. But for those whose intellect is purified and co-ordinated, for those whose bodies are in health, and whose passions are at once eager and controlled, it shall be lawful to choose their own way to the One Goal; videlicet, identity with that great Tao which is above the antithesis of Yang and Yin....
The men who are willing by this means to become the saviours of their country shall be called the Synagogue of Satan, so as to keep themselves from the friendship of the fools who mistake names for things.... They shall most carefully abstain from inducing any man to seek the Tao by any other way than that of equilibrium. They shall develop individual genius without considering whether in their opinion its fruition will tend to the good or evil of their country or of the world; for who are they to interfere with a soul whose balance has been crowned by the most holy Tao...?
The instructed infidel shall no longer sneer at the church-goer, for he will have been compelled to go to church until he saw the good points as well as the bad; and the instructed devotee will no longer detest the blasphemer, because he will have laughed with Ingersoll and Saladin.
Give the lion the heart of the lamb, and the lamb the force of the lion; and they will lie down in peace together.
ALEISTER CROWLEY
Thien Tao or the Synagogue of Satan, Sub Figura XLI
So, Crowley's probable amusement by people's overreaction to his dark reputation may have been related to his ideas regarding facing and overcoming fears. Some interpret further motives along these lines:
It is emphatically not true that his reputation as Satanist and Black Magician was spread entirely by his enemies; he collaborated gleefully in blackening his own character. To understand his motives, you must first understand the role of terror in reimprinting the nervous system for higher, post-terrestrial functioning. Aside from yoga and psychedelic drugs, the only method for reimprinting the nervous system is shock, especially near-death trauma. Most shamans are people who have gone through the death-rebirth process, just as in our own society you still find people who have passed through "clinical death," got revived on the operating table, and came back raving about transtime perspectives and beings of pure light. Crowley knew, as many shamans do, that you can get this result (shock and reimprint) quickly with some students by simply scaring the daylights out of them.... Crowley used this technique often. The students who confront their fear and conquer it achieve a higher neurological awareness.
Crowley himself describes similar intent behind defying conventional or comfortable patterns of thought:
...The average man's senses are deceived by his emotions. He gets things out of proportion and he exaggerates them even when he is able to appreciate them at all. I made up my mind that it should be an essential part of my system of initiation to force my pupils to be familiar with just those things which excite or upset them, until they have acquired the power of perceiving them accurately without interference from the emotions. It is all a branch of the art of concentration, no doubt; but it is one which has been very much neglected, and it is of supreme importance when the aspirant arrives at the higher levels, where it is a question of "making no difference between any one thing and any other thing", and uniting oneself with each and every possible idea. For as long as anything soever escapes assimilation there remains separateness and duality, or the potentiality of such. Evil can only be destroyed by "love under will", and so long as it is feared and hated, so long as we insist on attributing a real and irreconcilable existence to it, so long will it remain evil for us....ALEISTER CROWLEY
The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, Cap. 63
Some scientific thinkers suggest there is definite scientific value to defying conventions of thought:
A good scientist, in other words, does not merely ignore conventional wisdom, but makes a special effort to break it. Scientists go looking for trouble. This should be the m.o. of any scholar, but scientists seem much more willing to look under rocks....Whatever the reason, there seems a clear correlation between intelligence and willingness to consider shocking ideas. This isn't just because smart people actively work to find holes in conventional thinking. I think conventions also have less hold over them to start with....
Training yourself to think unthinkable thoughts has advantages beyond the thoughts themselves. It's like stretching. When you stretch before running, you put your body into positions much more extreme than any it will assume during the run. If you can think things so outside the box that they'd make people's hair stand on end, you'll have no trouble with the small trips outside the box that people call innovative.
Computer language designer & author PAUL GRAHAM
What You Can't Say
So...who asks if Crowley was a Satanist or not? What would it change even if he were foolish enough to subscribe to one myth or another? It's more important to ask if his message was balanced or imbalanced, dogmatic or skeptical, right or wrong for our purposes; and this is something we must investigate and consider for ourselves before deciding.