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Activating Miraculous Success
And Now for Something a Little Different
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Esoteric Symbology of the Tarot
Finding the Goddess in Ancient Greece
Hear O Humankind
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Magick in the Forest
Making the Break
Old Ways to Celebrate New Life
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So True, So Real
Spring Equinox Rite
The Lesson of the Tree
The Portrait of the Beast
To Be a Witch
To Pythia
We Are Everywhere
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The Portrait of the Beast

A Study of Aleister Crowley's Self-Portrait

By David Jaques

Do What Thou Wilt
Shall be the Whole of the Law

Every picture tells a story so the saying goes, and it's true enough. But to understand a picture fully, we must also know its history. Who created it? When? Where? And most important of all, why? The answers to these questions are clues that can lead to a treasure chest of hidden meaning. Apply them to Aleister Crowley's self-portrait, and it becomes clear that the picture has a most extraordinary and hitherto unsuspected significance.

That the picture has survived at all is remarkable. Somehow Crowley managed to keep it safely for nearly thirty years, despite leading an exceptionally turbulent life throughout that time. He finally parted with it just before his death in 1947 when, knowing that he was dying, he gave it to a beloved and trusted companion with the instruction that she should hide it. She did so, and she too kept it safely, despite leading a life every bit as full of adventure and vicissitude as Crowley's own, until she herself died in 1992. This, then, is our first clue; the picture was so important that Crowley not only took care to preserve it during his life, but also tried to make sure that it would be preserved after his death. We must assume that it had a particular significance for him.

For clues to what that significance might be, let's look at what was happening in Crowley's life when he painted the picture. He dated it, under his own system, Sun in Gemini, Anno XIV. By the conventional calendar this means that he painted it sometime in the period May to June 1918. We know from his diaries and autobiography (The Confessions of Aleister Crowley) that he was living in America from October 1914 until December 1919, so he must have painted the picture there. In fact, we know exactly where he painted it, because in The Confessions Crowley says that in October 1917 he moved to a studio in West 9th Street, New York, which he shared with Roddie Minor, a married woman living apart from her husband. This arrangement lasted until July 19th, 1918, when Crowley left New York for a magickal retreat on the Hudson River. We can therefore be certain that Crowley painted the self-portrait in his studio on West 9th Street, New York, while he was living there with Roddie Minor.

It happens that the five years Crowley spent in America were among the most important of his life. As he tells us in The Confessions, the whole of this period constituted his initiation to the Grade of Magus. The initiation had two distinct phases. During the first, which lasted from November 3rd, 1914, until June 9th, 1917, Crowley was subjected to a battery of tests and ordeals that brought him closer to despair than he had ever been in his life. During the second, which lasted from June 1917 until Crowley returned to England in December 1919, he became conscious of, and accepted, his destiny as a Magus. He said of this period: I was now, little by little, to enter upon my life as the Prophet of the Law of Thelema. For the purpose of our study this second phase is the most interesting, as it includes the period when the self-portrait was painted.

Early in the second phase Crowley met Roddie Minor, with whom he was living when he painted the self-portrait. He called her the Camel, because he recognized that he was on the homeward leg of his initiatory journey and believed that she was sent to carry him to his destination across the symbolic desert. After settling into their New York studio, Crowley and the Camel began to work magick, with the Camel fulfilling the role of seer. In January 1918 they established contact with a discarnate intelligence who presented himself as The Wizard Amalantrah. At about the same time, Crowley started writing Liber Aleph, The Book of Wisdom or Folly, a book written in the form of an epistle to the mysterious Magickal Son foretold to him in the Book of the Law.

Crowley wrote that Liber Aleph was intended to express the heart of my doctrine in the most deep and delicate dimensions and was the most tense and intense book that I have ever composed. The contact with Amalantrah proceeded in tandem with Crowley's struggle to articulate his doctrine in Liber Aleph, and elicited certain fundamental keys to the particular magickal formula that it was his destiny to fulfill. Now, there are two symbols that recur time and again throughout Amalantrah's communications: the egg and the child Horus (or Harpocrates). It comes as no surprise to find that these two symbols are also prominent in both Liber Aleph and the self-portrait. In Liber Aleph, Crowley says: the God Harpocrates is also the Serpent and the Egg, that is, the Holy Ghost. This is the most Secret of all Energies, the Seed of all Being. In his self-portrait Crowley has shaped the head in a form that is clearly intended to suggest the egg, and adorned it with the phallic lock of hair that is the serpent symbol of Harpocrates.

Clearly, the time when Crowley painted his self-portrait was a major turning point; perhaps the major turning point of his magickal careers. Thenceforth, he was to dedicate himself entirely to his work as the Magus, the Master Therion, Prophet of the Law of Thelema. And in his painting, Crowley portrays himself wearing a lamen that identifies him as the Magus who is To Mega Therion, the Word of the Aeon. To understand exactly what that meant to him, we must turn again to The Confessions, where he tells us: The Magus is, of course, not a person in any ordinary sense; he represents a certain nature or idea. To put it otherwise, we may say, the Magus is a word. He is the Logos of the Aeon which he brings to pass. The Magus [is sworn] to make his every act an expression of his magical formula. (emphasis added)

His every act is to be an expression of his magickal formula. Here is Crowley's intention in painting his self-portrait. Everything he was doing at that momentous time was designed to spread his formula, his Word that is the Law of the New Aeon. The painting shows him in the form of the Serpent and the Egg, the most Secret of all Energies, the Seed of all Being, wearing a Lamen that announces his identity as the Logos of the Aeon, and bears the magickal keys to his power. Such a painting can only be intended as a medium for the evocation of the power of its creator, the Prophet of the Law of Thelema. And the Prophet is no less than the very Word of the Aeon, the Avatar of the Law, the Law itself.

We can only imagine the consternation amongst Crowley's followers when the painting was found to be missing after his death. One of them had a photograph of it that, after a little doctoring to conceal identifying details (like the signature, date and Lamen), was published in 1958 in John Symonds' book The Magic of Aleister Crowley. It was never published again. An appallingly crude copy of the painting appeared for the first time in the 1969 Cape edition of The Confessions, and has appeared in nearly every book about Crowley published since. Where, I wonder, did it come from? I doubt we shall ever know.

What matters is that Crowley's real painting has survived and is accessible again. It is, without doubt, the most potent Icon of the New Aeon. It was released from the estate of its former guardian on 9/3/93, a singularly appropriate date bearing in mind that 93 is the numerical formula of Crowley's Law of Thelema. And it was published in a limited edition reproduction on Crowley's birthday, October 12th, 1993. After 46 years in hiding, Crowley's visual incarnation of the most Secret of all Energies has been unveiled. What the consequences may be, only time will tell but one thing is certain. The Master Therion intended it as a vehicle for the transmission of his Word.

Love is the Law,
Love under Will