The Western Gate

Channelling Aleister Crowley via Lucid Dream work was always going to be difficult. I remember reading Dion Fortune’s books, perhaps the first ‘serious’ author in the occult world that I laid my hands on. I was constantly frustrated through her writings as nearly every page was littered with phrases like, ” we cannot enter into this now for it is a subject that requires much more detail,” or indeed, and even more frustrating, ” these keys cannot be explained here lest the reader themselves are initiated into a proper order” etc etc, in other words Dion wasn’t going to give the game away.
In one book however she let it slip, mentioning (to me) for the first time Aleister Crowley, whom she said, spilled the beans, sang like a canary, revealed all the secrets…. I don’t think I finished that book for I now sought out this ‘Crowley’ and all the ‘secrets’.
I can’t remember the first book I bought that he wrote as I seemed to buy lots of them all at once, and devoured them. Without doubt 777 is the most used and dogeared book in my library, full of margin notes and added pages etc.
To channel Crowley would be hard, his personae is well documented by various biographies, not least his own “Autohagiography” , a subjective model had already been inferred in my mind, the “beast” was already portrayed.

I tried a few times in the setting of the lucid dream garden and though I saw a rotund gentlemen with an ill fitting suit wander around the perimeter I couldn’t be sure if I was beginning to view him. Something wasn’t right.
The other method I use in lucid dream work is to visualize a temple. Now this temple that I constructed looks more like the foyer of an elaborate hotel lounge. I have photoshopped a basic montage of what it looks like which I’ll add (or maybe not lest it be frequented by cowans and tresspassers). There are two ‘reception desks’ – the left side would be the logical (Jerome) side, The right side the creative /Orphic (Rumi) side and in front I would walk the stairs to the elevator, there I would use the methods of Qabbalistic pathworking. Now this Hotel/Temple foyer would itself be situated in Yesod, or let us say the subconscious mind, the dream-mind and the free imaginative arising, fed both by the logical paths and the creative, its is the sphere that reflects the (Tiphareth) equilibrium of the divine and human self.
I reasoned if I were to draw Aleister Crowley into dream he would be more likely to manifest here than a garden. I’m not sure he wandered gardens though I know he climbed mountains.
The foyer was more conducive, lunch ala The Café Royale.
Crowley did come, Neither from the right or left ,or as I would had wagered, from the central stairs via ‘Tiphareth‘ . he seemed to walk from behind me and there we sat facing each other in this opulent surrounding of a, now, tea room.

I was to ask him many things, but was tongue tied. There was something very odd about him as if he analysed everything about you giving the impression perhaps that he knew all about you. There seemed to be an agenda behind his every move and words. At this point I must say there are things, as Dion fortune, said, that I cannot enter into that we spoke of, but these concerned my personal development and nothing perhaps that a Thelemite or devotee would want/demand to know.
I did not feel during the session that I was belittled or sat there perhaps as food for a predator, he was neither obnoxious nor overtly pleasant, but there was something else that didn’t so much put you ill at ease but gave the impression you needed to look over your shoulder.
With regards to revealing anything, it was more discussing what was known, though he felt more congenial with trivia, gossip and yes, without wanting to feed the wolves, lewd stories. He told me one story with great animated gestures, much like he was an actor on the boards of the globe, of a party, a masquerade party. It was called a Mute Masquerade. The party goers were fully masked and disguised and were not a liberty to speak throughout the dance.
It were, basically a licence to indulge in an orgy somewhat with whatever/whoever took your fancy, this feast of Bacchus.
He explained how an obviously wealthy woman judging by her attire seduced, an obviously much younger man who had been dancing drunkardly the whole night and flirting with any woman who looked to be rich. Now of course, Crowley never used the word seduced and the description of what occurred seemed to be imparted in order to shock or cause offence, none of which worked on me and he seemed to continue the story in a more objective tone, and more relaxed without the animation or overtly lurid description. However the gist of the story which he enjoyed revealing was that the virile young man and the wealth matriarch were in fact, unbeknown to them, mother and son. Neither being revealed to each other by nature of disguise and silence.
At this point, I was to ask how they, or he, would know… if all were masked and mute? but before I had asked he said, ” I of course, knew everyone there, and it were my hand that guided the affair to happen.”
It was this where I think I viewed his life and all around were but players on a chess board, how everything was indeed laid out as a performance, indeed as I had mused over earlier, there was an agenda behind everything.
He gave me a note paper onto which was drawn a symbol in order to reacquaint, a symbol that is viewed upon a door or within a circle in order to bring him forward again in dreamwork.
To the left and right of me, behind two flaming luminescent columns lit, at once I was back in the waking world.
Rewriting this episode, of course I am aware, once again a story of Crowley where in the main the subject of matter would be some lurid tale. That’s not the story. It took many many attempts to dislodge the subjective view I had, built by, well decades of immersing myself into his works. The missing parts of the story, they are personal in as much as they concern my development and questions that are formed from my path, to which I received some illuminating pointers, you just have to have a bit of a laugh too.

Postscript
I have no knowledge of whether the mute masquerade story is true, nor whether it has been written of elsewhere and has been reimagined from some memory or other, I have found some odd descriptions of masquerade parties that descended into wanton lust and decadence from the ‘flapper’ era but no mention of Crowley. Regardless of whether “I am perplexed”, the story remains.