Other
Known
Editions: |
+ |
Berashith.
Privately Printed, Paris, France, January 1903. |
+ |
The Sword of Song. Called by Christians The Book of the
Beast.
Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth,
Boleskine, Foyers, Inverness, 1904. |
+ |
The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley, Vol. II,
pg. 233, Society for the Propagation of Religious Truth,
Boleskine, Foyers, Inverness, 1906. |
|
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Comments
by
Aleister
Crowley: |
The twentieth and twenty-first were great days in my life. I
wrote an essay which I originally gate the title “Crowleymas
Day” and published under the title “Berashith”
in Paris by itself, incorporating it subsequently in The
Sword of Song. The general idea is to eliminate the idea of
infinity from our conception of the cosmos. It also shows the
essential identity of Manichaeism (Christianity), Vedantism and
Buddhism. Instead of explaining the universe as modifications of
a unity, which itself needs explaining, I regard it as NOTHING,
conceived as (illusory) pairs of contradictories. What we call a
thought does not really exist at all by itself. It is merely
half of nothing. I know that there are practical difficulties in
accepting this, though it gets rid so nicely of a priori
obstacles. However, the essay is packed with ideas, nearly all
of which have proved extremely fertile, and it represents fairly
enough the criticism of my genius upon the varied ideas which I
had gathered since I first came to Asia.
— The Confessions of Aleister Crowley.
New York, NY. Hill and Wang, 1969. Page 275-276.
______________________________
I published a small private edition of “Berashith” in Paris; but
my spiritual state was in reality very enfeebled. I am beginning
to suspect myself of swelled head with all its cohort of ills.
I’m afraid I thought myself rather a little lion on the strength
of my journey, and the big people in the artistic world in
France accepted me quite naturally as a colleague.
— The Confessions of Aleister Crowley.
New York, NY. Hill and Wang, 1969. Page 337.
______________________________
Another
seed of the past began to bear fruit at this time. I had never
attempted to transmit my occult knowledge as such. I had never
attempted to write prose, as such, apart from short accounts of
my climbs, with the exception of the preface to White Stains
(Collected Works, vol. II, pp. 195-8).
Berashith was my first serious attempt at an
essay.
— The Confessions of Aleister Crowley.
New York, NY. Hill and Wang, 1969. Page
536. |
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