Between the Beast and the Bitch

A Brief Assessment of Aleister Crowley and Ayn Rand

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.

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I understand that I may lose a few people to this topic, as I usually do, but here we go.

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Introduction

I am generally loathe to tell stories about my adolescence, though in this case, it seems like a good way to introduce the subject matter.

During my final years at a military-styled religious academy, the principal handed me a flyer for the scholarship essay contest from the Ayn Rand Institute to write about one of the selected topics regarding Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. I’d never heard of Ayn Rand, but the goal, per my principal, was to shred her philosophy as godless, morally bankrupt, and most certainly antithetical to Christian values. As a voracious reader, I was intrigued, especially after learning the book was about an architect. My family was full of architects, and I was fascinated with the field.

After reading The Fountainhead, I was surprised to find that it aligned with many of my internal values—not all of them, of course—but so much of the world around me suddenly made sense. I immediately snatched up Atlas Shrugged, and my world moved in a seismic way.

At about the same time I was reading Atlas Shrugged, I discovered Crowley through the works of Anton LaVey. I was in the midst of a huge shift (obviously) from the values of my childhood, and Crowley was just enough to push me over the edge.

Today’s formal education is not as expansive as it once was even fifty years ago, much less a century or two ago. Many people don’t read for the depth of knowledge but to support their prejudices. And the far majority that I run across tend to lack the comprehension necessary to discern knowledge from propaganda.

I started to read Rand as an antagonist and found myself intrigued by the candor of her work. I built a collection of everything available at the time and then continued to expand over the years as more work became available to me. Much like Crowley’s corpus, I’ve read everything I can get my hands on to ensure I have as complete a picture of her philosophy as possible.

Connecting the Beast and the Bitch

This leads to a discussion that has regularly arisen over the decades about the usefulness of Ayn Rand in relation to Thelema, based on a couple of side comments by Crowley and others.

I’ve heard it alleged that one of Crowley’s disciples compared him to Howard Roark in The Fountainhead. I can’t find any evidence for that claim, but I can see the comparison even if the anecdote is untrue. What I do have is Crowley writing that The Fountainhead was “a first-class book — most encouraging”.¹

The most direct recommendation comes from Marcelo Motta—and I realize many will debate the value of his advice, but ad hominems don’t interest me in the pursuit of understanding. He claimed,

the social aspect of this verse [AL 2.59] has been sensed by a woman writer, Ayn Rand, and developed in two works of fiction worthy of perusal by Thelemites: The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Although her reasoning is often mixed-up or naive, she grasped the main point well enough.²

Ignoring the backhanded compliment, Motta took the smart route, I think, and wiser than most modern Thelemites, in seeing the value of Rand’s work where it was important, offering a relatable cultural reference to the masses of the time, and discarding that which didn’t work. It’s fairly easy to read his last sentence as a caution not to take Rand too seriously on the whole.

Society, with the advent and (im)maturation of the Internet, has become far more all-or-nothing polarized in its (in)ability to parse information from a source without offering some kind of commentary on the ethics, politics, religious values, or bathroom habits of an author. When it comes to Rand, the views of entertainment “news” websites and misguided politicians take precedence in the minds of those who lack the critical skills to examine source materials without allowing bias to influence understanding.

My question, of course, is why Motta felt so strongly about this. Decades of work with Rand’s material allows me to answer that—at least to my own satisfaction, even if I will never conclusively know his motivations. My comments here will remain focused on the connection between the writings of Rand and Crowley while I leave the current political minefield for those who wish to debate such nonsense. Nor will I tackle many of the misunderstandings by Thelemites (and others) on issues like Rand favoring the rich over the poor (which is untrue), or only CEOs and big businesses are special (also untrue), or monetary wealth as the measure by which individuals are important to society (quite untrue).

The only comment I will make in this regard is I remain surprised more by liberals who criticize Rand while ignoring her comments that (a) make her consistent throughout her work and as an exemplar of her philosophy and (b) show an inconsistency of modern liberalism that is an embarrassment to social justice and welfare values—whatever one may think of those values. I would submit most of this is due to the lack of comprehension, especially in Thelemic circles, to the details of Rand’s work. Her attitudes and behaviors did little to endear others to her, but her philosophy makes the most complicated modern Thelemic writing look like child’s play.

Like it or not, she’s had more influence on our society—for better and, mostly out of a misunderstanding of her work by the political Right, for worse—than any modern Thelemite, dead or alive.

That said, we can agree that Rand was a bitch—and then move on.

The Simplest Question

I want to start with Motta’s assertion about Rand grasping the broad strokes of Thelema’s social aspect in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. While, in my opinion, far more superficial than her nonfiction work, I see where Motta is headed. Sit down any number of Thelemites who claim to have read Rand and/or claim to hate Rand and ask them to provide the basic thesis of either book, and you will immediately get blank stares or a deluge of ad hominems—or both.

Rand claimed the theme of The Fountainhead was “individualism versus collectivism, not in politics, but in man’s soul.”³ For Atlas Shrugged, she said it was “The role of the mind in man’s existence.”⁴ These seem innocuous enough.

Note that according to Rand, the emphasis isn’t political in either of these novels. I’m going to ignore this because everyone does, including her own organizational heirs. But I want to emphasize this up front. Her novels aren’t political manifestos!

So what social sense of Thelema is found in Rand’s work?

This is the question before us.

I ask this question regularly of Thelemites, in particular, when it comes to these silly debates—“what is a single sentence summary of Rand’s philosophy expressed in her novel Atlas Shrugged?”

It is not a summary of Rand’s entire philosophy but only that portion she was attempting to express in this particular piece of fiction. It never surprises me when this question is met with silence. It is a test by which I can separate those who have read Rand and those who have pretended to read Rand.

The answer is obvious because it is one of the book's most quoted and memed lines.

I’ll come back to this in a bit.

It All Comes Down To Words

Keep in mind, of course, that Rand defined her terms specifically, if not novelly in many ways. For instance, altruism isn’t just being uber-nice to each other (as most people would define it).

The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value.⁵

Or, in Thelemic terminology, the ethics of the so-called “previous aeon.” Same thing with selfishness—which, with Rand, might even be more compassionate than Christianity without the concept of self-sacrifice, which Thelema rejects.

Even her definition of capitalism isn’t particularly standard, though it may be one thing in her favor.

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others.⁶

We find the use of force even in the economic sphere under the so-called capitalist society of the United States. I am quite sure Rand would not approve despite the attempts to suggest this is all going according to her plan—which, ironically, the use of economic violence against individuals, businesses, and whole groups of society is a major theme of Atlas Shrugged. The fact so many liberals miss all this shows their ignorance of the actual content of the novel.

Arguing against Rand without using her specific terminology is foolish. Liberals are upset with her because she’s against altruism (as defined by her) and for selfishness (again, as defined by her). However, ignoring that Rand discussed charity, saving people’s lives in emergencies, and other relevant collaborative issues because you read the word selfishness—which, in Rand’s system of thought, includes charity, saving people’s lives, and cooperation between people—may not be the pinnacle of willful ignorance, but it’s close to it.

Problems Defining Individualism

I think both Crowley and Rand had similar, equally misguided, idealistic notions about America and the myth of ‘rugged individualism.’ Crowley wrote glowingly about America and its so-called values, in an underhanded slight, commenting on “the original brand of American freedom—which really was Freedom—contained the precept to leave other people severely alone, and thus assured the possibility of expansion on his own lines to every man.”⁷ Nothing could be further from the truth in a country literally grounded in the building of whole social institutions on top of the pooling blood of Indigenous populations. He was outright delusional on this matter.

Rand was far more wordy on the subject than Crowley, but just as asinine:

America is the land of the uncommon man. It is the land where man is free to develop his genius—and to get its just rewards. It is the land where each man tries to develop whatever quality he may possess and to rise to whatever degree he can, great or modest. It is not the land where one glories or is taught to glory in one’s mediocrity. No self-respecting man in America is or thinks of himself as “little,” no matter how poor he may be.⁸

And once again, Rand writes:

There have never been any “masses” in America: the poorest American is an individual and, subconsciously, an individualist. Marxism, which has conquered our universities, is a dismal failure as far as the people are concerned: Americans cannot be sold on any sort of class war; American workers do not see themselves as a “proletariat,” but are among the proudest of property owners. It is professors and businessmen who advocate cooperation with Soviet Russia—American labor unions do not.⁹

Whatever one may think of Marxism, the current boogieman of the political Right, her statements are clear about the position of the individual over the collective, that wealth or the lack thereof are not indicators of success or failure concerning the value of the individual as many of her detractors claim otherwise. (Though note her denigration of “businessmen” here, for those who think she’s all about business and fuck the individual.)

Crowley echoes this stark individualism most directly when he Freudianly states, “The family, the clan, the state count for nothing; the Individual is the Autarch.”¹⁰

Granted, all this matters little to those who feel Crowley (and/or Rand) went overboard with this perspective of radical individualism. I merely want to point out a foundational similarity to the position held by both Crowley and Rand about the centrality of the individual. Thelema does have this centrality as well, but it’s not as radical or as fundamental as some of our own extremists would have us believe.¹¹ Much like taking Rand through a critical approach, we have to ensure we approach Crowley in the same manner.

I think it’s interesting that when you start to dig deeper into Rand’s philosophical linguistics, you find her statements like this one concerning the hero of The Fountainhead.

The idea of individualism is not new, but nobody had defined a consistent and specific way to live by it in practice. It is in their statements on morality that the individualist thinkers have floundered and lost their case. They had nothing better to offer than vulgar selfishness which consisted of sacrificing others to self. When I realized that that was only another form of collectivism—of living through others by ruling them—I had the key to The Fountainhead and to the character of Howard Roark.¹²

Altruism and Selfishness Redux

My emphasis over the last couple of decades has been the connection between Crowley and Rand on the level of ethics, to understand how selfishness fits into Thelema as defined by both Crowley and Rand. What Motta calls the “social aspect” of Thelema, I believe, is the intersection between ethics and politics. Where does society fit with the individual (not the other way around)? Does an individual have any responsibility to society? The answer, I think, is both the difference and harmony between altruism and selfishness—as defined by Rand and Crowley, separately but in surprising congruency with each other.

I’ve already pointed out how Rand defined altruism.

Crowley defines altruism as “the yielding of the self to external impressions” [which is a near-mystical or even psychological definition in line with Rand’s] and “a direct assertion of duality, which is division, restriction, sin, in its vilest form” regarding “this folly against self” in his commentary to AL 2.22. In the same reference, he calls altruism “hideously corrupting both to the [puritanical] hypocrite and to his victim.”¹³ Crowley addresses this verse again, twice, when he says, “the idea is to dismiss, curtly and rudely, the entire body of doctrine which insists on altruism as a condition of spiritual progress”;¹⁴ and then again, “So ‘… It is a lie, this folly against self. …’ only means, ‘To hell with sentimental altruism, with false modesty, with all those most insidious fiends, the sense of guilt, of shame—in a word, the ‘inferiority complex’ or something very like it’.”¹⁵

Granted, I think Crowley's experience with a radical branch of Christianity tainted him, but he stands on the same damaged emotional bedrock as Rand’s version of radical anti-Communism, from which she defined capitalism. Both go overboard when it comes to altruism, needlessly redefining it as some kind of forced and maladaptive human trait.

But I prefer to see altruism defined as that which occurs “in all interactions in which some individuals benefit others at cost to themselves. […] It may be indirect or direct, involuntary or voluntary, and one-way or reciprocal, and costs may be paid by acts or in other ways.”¹⁶ This provides no moral connotation to the concept of altruism and understands it from a high-level perspective. Because we have no moral foundation for the term, altruism becomes a spectrum. In an evolutionary sense, it enhances the chances of survival via adaptation. In a social sense, while it is still a survival trait at a group/kinship level, it has the potential to swing in the other direction and be predatory. This is what both Crowley and Rand were attempting to warn against.¹⁷ But this definition leaves altruism, even its abuse, in the hands of the individual rather than the judgment of the collective.

What we find in the pathological approach to altruism is this concept by Rand called the sanction of the victim, “the willingness of the good to suffer at the hands of the evil, to accept the role of sacrificial victim.”¹⁸ I think that might be a bit extreme, language-wise, but I see the point, and I see this in action all around us. For Crowley, the “idea of self-sacrifice is a moral cancer.”¹⁹ He’s not talking about being nice to your neighbor over the fence or taking dinner over to a bedridden friend—both of which fall under our ‘nonmoral’ definition of altruism. He’s specifically talking about this idea of another having a lease, a hold, a lien on someone’s life and liberty.

Crowley talks about this in one of his most often quoted diary entries (about being “mislead by the enthusiasm of an illumination,” but it remains appropriate in this current context)

if he should find apparent conflict between his spiritual duty and his duty to honour, it is almost sure evidence that a trap is being laid for him and he should unhesitatingly stick to the course which ordinary decency indicates … I wish to say definitely, once and for all, that people who do not understand and accept this position have utterly failed to grasp the fundamental principles of the Law of Thelema.²⁰

“Duty to honour.” That may include being nice to your neighbor. That may include saving the drowning child. That may be feeding the homeless. But in all things we come back to several important injunctions from the Book of the Law: “thou hast no right but to do thy will” [AL 1.42] and “There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt” [AL 3.60], for example.

Your will is central to all decisions to be made—but if you’re being a jackass, well, I would submit you have stepped outside the bounds of “ordinary decency.” You have been led astray to think that any one person may impose their will upon another. Conversely, though, others have no right upon you either. This is the point both Crowley and Rand make—though I think Crowley makes it far more directly.

The Question Answered

I said I’d come back to the challenge I’ve offered for decades. I’ve only ever provided the response in public once. I’ll do so again here.

Rand writes, in Atlas Shrugged, the oath of John Galt’s utopian Atlantis:

I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.²¹

It is the single sentence that sums up the ethical theme of the novel. And it really is the sentence that also poetically provides the ethics of Thelema which we usually find more succinctly from Crowley as: mind your own business. I merely prefer the poetry.

Caveats (Because Someone Always Complains)

Frankly, the Law of Thelema posits we are self-contained aggregates of experience who have no right to another’s will or another’s existence. The quote from Rand falls in line with the verses from the Book of the Law I offered up earlier, but I’ll leave here again: “thou hast no right but to do thy will” and “There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt.”

Yet there’s more to the story—in fact, the whole story started before that. We also find there is a communion, a connection, between all individuals that form the whole ‘company of heaven’ [AL 1.2]. But we’ll get into that another time.

Rand wasn’t against community. She was against collectivism which she defined as “the subjugation of the individual to a group—whether to a race, class or state.”²² She bemoaned what she called the view of society as “a super-organism, as some supernatural entity apart from and superior to the sum of its individual members”²³ and that “a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members.”²⁴ Crowley vacillated between his desire to run a cult and the individual approach to spiritual self-actualization, but he consistently sided with individualism as the priority for every man and every woman. Granted, I also believe that Crowley—via Thelema—was far more balanced between the agency of the individual and the communion of existence. The closeness, however, of Crowley and Rand in their ethical perspectives cannot be overstated.

Allow me a moment to address what I know is coming: if everyone is selfish per Rand, and they will “do their own thing” to the point of never helping others, it will be a dog-eat-dog world of people stepping all over each other.

Will it?

Rand writes

Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: “I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense.”

An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others. An individualist is a man who says: “I will not run anyone’s life—nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule nor be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone—nor sacrifice anyone to myself.”²⁵

Crowley reminds us often that “Do what thou wilt” is not “Do as I please.”

Allow me to repeat a third time: “thou hast no right but to do thy will” [AL 1.42] and “There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt” [AL 3.60].

I’ll close with the original verse that led to this discussion.

Beware therefore! Love all, lest perchance is a King concealed! Say you so? Fool! If he be a King, thou canst not hurt him. [AL 2.59]

Love all, indeed.

Postscript on Rand

I’ll add a quick postscript about how I feel concerning the rest of Rand’s philosophy so people don’t assume I’m just a rand-om Rand-oid. See what I did there?

Frankly, I think her metaphysics is punked. Her epistemology seems to be okay, even if a little shaky in places (I think Peikoff does a better job). Ultimately, both Crowley (via Thelema) and Rand advocate a metaphysical position of self-determination, an epistemological position of self-exploration, and an ethical position of self-accountability. I don’t believe the natural conclusion for politics is the same between Thelema and Rand—specifically because Rand is still dealing with the foundation of a Christian worldview despite her renunciation of it. She can’t avoid it, and it taints everything from her metaphysics on up (down?). But Crowley’s politics, such as they are, aren’t much better either.

Love is the law, love under will.

1. Aleister Crowley, personal communication to Sascha Germer, February 14, 1947.

2. Aleister Crowley, The Commentaries of AL Being the Equinox, Vol. V., No. 1., Edited by Marcelo Motta. (Samuel Weiser, Inc., 1975.), 154.

3. Rand, Ayn. 1963. “For the New Intellectual.” In For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, 2nd ed. Signet, 68.

4. Rand, Ayn. 1975. “Basic Principles of Literature.” In The Romantic Manifesto: A Philosophy of Literature, 2nd ed. Signet, 80.

5. Rand, Ayn. 1984. “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World.” In Philosophy: Who Needs It. Ayn Rand Library, 61 (all emphasis mine).

6. Rand, Ayn, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, and Robert Hessen. 1967. “What Is Capitalism?” In Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. New American Library, 19. (emphasis mine)

7. Crowley, Aleister. 1996. The Law is for All: The Authorized Popular Commentary on Liber AL vel Legis sub figurâ CCXX, the Book of the Law. New Falcon Publications, 37.

8. Rand, Ayn. “Screen Guide for Americans.” Plain Talk, November 1947, 40.

9. Rand, Ayn. 1984. “Don’t Let It Go.” In Philosophy: Who Needs It. Ayn Rand Library, 212.

10. Crowley, Aleister. 1994. “Morals of AL.” In Magick Without Tears. New Falcon, 303.

11. Since writing this piece in 2015, I have altered my position from the idea that there was ever a primary focus in the 1960s to mid-1990s Thelema on radical individualism to a focus on the radicalization of individualism. Individualism isn’t the problem. That’s an inherent part of Thelema. Even a “radical individualism,” to some degree—though we might have to put some definitions in place there to grasp what that means in relation to a non-radical individualism (maybe an asceticism?)—has room at this table. But, much like the radicalization of any religion or philosophy, all it does is create ideological fanatics who are out to go boom rather than to go build.

12. Rand, Ayn. 1997. “Letter 591.” In Letters of Ayn Rand. Plume. (emphasis mine)

13. Crowley, The Law is for All, 111.

14. Crowley, Aleister. 1994. “This ‘Self’ Introversion.” In Magick Without Tears. New Falcon, 274.

15. Crowley, “This ‘Self’ Introversion,” 278. (emphasis mine)

16. Darlington, P. J. 1978. “Altruism: Its Characteristics and Evolution.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 75 (1): 385–89. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.75.1.385.

17. I recommend Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion by Dr. Paul Boom.

18. Peikoff, Leonard. 1976. “The Philosophy of Objectivism Lecture Series, Lecture 8.” ARI Campus. 1976.

19. Crowley, The Law is for All, 45.

20. Crowley, Aleister. 1996. Magical Diaries of Aleister Crowley: Tunisia 1923. Weiser Books, 21 (emphasis mine).

21. Rand, Ayn. 1995. Atlas Shrugged. Signet, 670-671.

22. Rand, Ayn. 1944. “The Only Path to Tomorrow.” Reader’s Digest, January 1944, 88. (emphasis mine)

23. Rand, Ayn, and Nathaniel Branden. 1964. “Collectivized ‘Rights.’” In The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. Signet, 103.

24. Rand, Ayn, and Nathaniel Branden. 1964. “Racism.’” In The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism. Signet, 129.

25. Rand, Ayn, and Peter Schwartz. 1998. “Textbook of Americanism.” In The Ayn Rand Column: Written for the Los Angeles Times. Second Renaissance Press, 84. (emphasis mine)