Having written much about Aleister Crowley and his influence upon pop-occulture, we will, herein, continue considering personage who have looked to the to mega therion / the great beast for inspiration. Find our previous articles on Crowley here—which range from L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology to Damien Echols (of the West Memphis Three-WM3 murders infamy) and much, much more.
The following is translated from Paolo Baroni’s Italian site, “Tutti Pazzi Per Crowley [Something about Crowley],” Centro Sangiorgio, December 27, 2013 AD.
FRANK ZAPPA
In the book Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa, Pauline Butcher (Zappa’s personal secretary from 1968 to 1972 AD) worte:
“Gail [Zappa] put the scissors down and ran her hands through Frank [Zappa]’s hair, lifting and moulding it with her fingers. I blamed Aleister Crowley, whose book they’d recently acquired. Gail had started using words like occult and mysticism and alchemy.
‘The tension between male and female,’ Crowley claimed, ‘is fundamental to existence and sexual magic.’ He saw women’s role as subjugated to man, a role that Gail seemed happy to accept, and Frank wholeheartedly concurred…
If I could vaguely understand Gail’s interest in Crowley, I could not fathom Frank’s, a man who exuded rationality.”
Well, there is no conflict between following Crowley’s magickal system and rationality as if you conjure demons, they will show up in one way/form or another—it is rational.
A 4 disc special edition of The Making Of Freak Out: An FZ Audio Documentary Aleister Crowley (betwixt Lily Tomlin and Keith Richards).
“Frank Zappa had one thing in common with Crowley’s hatred of the Christian religion. Zappa wrote: ‘If you want to stay together in a unique situation with the people you love, fine, but the basis of this desperate sociology on the idea of the type That lives in the clouds, which the Big Book, who knows if you’ve been good or bad and worry about these things, people, place everything on this idea is the simian brain thinking.’” [Paolo Baroni is quoting the book “The Real Frank Zappa Book,” (Simon & Schuster, 1990 AD), p. 301]
In the song Church Chat, Frank Zappa sings:
“You know today the church is in a terrible state / the bucks just aren’t rollin’ in like they used to / and when the bucks don’t come in / the church comes up with a new gimmick to make you spend to Heaven…
listen to this ladies and gentlemen, when the church wants to get your money they remind you about hell. (whoo-ho-ha-ha)…
Sometimes people say: that if you **** somebody (oh lord) it’s a sin, (oui-oui [French for “yes-yes”]) this may or may not be true…Some people would say this is a sin / and if you sin you’re gonna go to hell.
Well ladies and gentlemen: There ain’t no hell. (oui) There is no such thing as hell. (oui) There is no hell, there is only France! (oui-oui) Oui, oui.”
AEROSMITH’s STEVEN TYLER
“In His recent autobiography, the Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler Has he ADMITTED That Practiced by sexual magic Following The Teachings of the Great Beast 666.
One of the “top 10 most terrific revelations that Tyler shares with us, his loyal readers” is that “He practiced Sex Magick” which states, “I’ve practiced Crowley Magick so I know it works,’ Tyler writes of channeling the power of the mutual orgasm to achieve wider goals.”
He notes that he is not claiming that “every girl I slept with” was consciously involved or that he “asked her to pray for the same thing I was praying for” but that he was consciously practicing ritualistic sex magick and having sex as a vehicle for prayer “namely that Aerosmith would become the greatest American band’” (Marc Spitz, “Top 10 Revelations in Steven Tyler’s Memoir, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?,” Vanity Fair, May 9, 2011 AD).