ALEISTER CROWLEY EATS THE ICE CREAM (Patreon)

Hello, good people of the internet and welcome to a new series here on Patreon where I go back to my old blog posts from the AIWW site and see if I still align with them or if I have anything to add or subtract from them. Maybe at the end I'll put it altogether as a book collection, or maybe I won't. Time will tell, I guess.

I'm pretty sure this is the first proper magick blog post I wrote.

It was originally written sometime in 2014 for my Tumblr blog under the pseudonym Frater Blue (yes, I know).  At the time I had recently deleted all my social media pages as I was trying to make a clean break from the Irish Comic community at the time. I had been running a very popular Irish Comic website at the time and as usual with these sorts of things I had become very bogged down in all the behind-the-scenes politics and drama.  I was burnt out and I wanted to change the focus of my creative life.

However, I also wasn't fully ready to come out of the broom closet as yet as no one in my circle of friends was in any way into magick, or the occult, or spirituality, and any of them that did express an opinion about it were very hostile and aggressively against it! Which is why AIWW started on Tumblr as an anonymous page called Frater Blue.

However, back in those days, Facebook wouldn't allow you to use anything other than your legal name and my new Frater Blue social media pages got suspended. So I decided, fuck it, and just used my own name again and started the AIWW blog proper in January 2015.

Still, it took me a few years before I allowed any "real life" friends or acquaintances know what I was up to–or more correctly, I just stopped giving a shit what people thought.

Anyway, in this blog post it's clear that I hadn't found my voice as a writer at this point– I'm not sure I have yet –  but I do still rather like this post and I still love the idea of the wickedest man in the world eating an ice-cream cone even when it turned out it wasn't actually the case.

I still stand behind the idea and the tech, though. It has worked well for me over the years since.

ALEISTER CROWLEY EATS THE ICE CREAM.

Just before Christmas, I had a discussion with my sister and mother about why magick seems to work for some people and not others or why, even when it does work, why it seems to only work some of the time. The same theme came up again in an online chat this morning, and I found myself offering the same answer.

We could just start with the idea that magick sometimes works for some people because the gods love them more. But to be honest, this presupposes many things that I just don’t buy into. I’m just going to move things along swiftly by proposing we imagine, just for a minute, that if your magick, prayer, positive thinking, or even mundane life goal hasn’t worked or been answered, then let’s assume it’s your fault. Fault is probably too strong of a word to use, so let’s correct it by saying that if it didn’t work, then you are the reason[1].

There is a story about Aleister Crowley, which I told my sister and mother and re-told this morning in a Facebook chat window. Whether it is true or not is incidental[2]. The Chaos Wizard in me sides with Alan Moore when he proclaims that ALL stories are true.

Uncle Al was going through one of his lack of money stages and was nearing the date when his rent was due. He had only a few pounds to his name, and there was no way he could afford to pay up. So, being Aleister Crowley, he decided to do some magick to get the money to materialise. After the ritual, he was so confident that his magick would work that he went out and spent his remaining money on an Ice-cream[3]. Obviously enough, the rent money arrived in time and disaster was averted.

Leap of Faith

The image of a smug Crowley eating ice cream and chuckling to himself about his magick makes me very happy. I genuinely smile when I think about The Great Beast enjoying some frozen, sugary milk, and laughing at the world, knowing that all is well. Of course, the point is that when he was eating the ice cream, things weren’t good. The rent still had to be paid, and he had just spent all his money on a desert.

Now, faith is a funny word for some people, myself included. I’m not sure what people mean when they use it. It sometimes means that you have to believe something that you know probably isn’t true. Or it is used to explain away something that there isn’t a good argument for. In the Ice-cream case, I see it more as a need for trust.

Faith is trust that things are going to go as you plan. The Ice-cream, for Crowley, is a leap of faith that shows him, the world, the gods, whoever, that he is confident in his magick. He knows that his outcome is inevitable. It’s like looking at a horse race and knowing which horse will win. You just know.

And that, I believe, is why sometimes magick doesn’t work for some people. They do their mantra, say their prayer, and then act and do the way they always have. When things have really worked out for me, I added this Leap-of-faith section to the ritual. It’s more than just “stepping out boldly” or “faking it until you make it”. It’s performing an action that you would only do if your outcome was assured.[4]

So, next time you do some magick or say a prayer to the gods of your choice, make sure you eat the ice cream[5].

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2024 Notes

[1] Tommie from the past is treading very close to the ye olde victim blaming game here but given the fact that I know him, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Time has shown me that things often don’t work out and it’s no one’s fault. It’s just how it is.

[2] It’s half true.

[3] It was actually champagne and oysters.

[4] This is not to say that you should be utterly carefree and careless in your choice of this action. Its not a call to say "fuck it" and let go of all responsibility and let tomorrow be damned. The leap of faith is a token gesture. Its performing a small act you would only perform if your outcome was assured not putting all your money on black.

[5] I still think that is good magick, however, as I said in the introduction. That said, there are zero guarantees with magick– things will sometimes not work out even if you do “everything right”,  and sometimes Magick works even when you have no faith in it at all or fails even when you are convinced its a sure thing. Magick is a mystery, and not one of those mysteries that are meant to be solved. The other kind–the eternal kind! The sort of mystery that's meant to be lived and experienced.