POLITICS, RELIGION, AND DEVIL WORSHIP: What voters and Christians can learn from the notorious Aleister Crowley.

So I was listening to Rush Limbaugh the other day and he said something about Obama hating kittens. Then I saw a photo of an Occupy Seattle anarchist throwing a rock through a Nike store window while wearing…wait for it…Nikes. I thought to myself: This is going to be a nasty year for an election. The Republican primary was bad. Oddly, the conservative alternative to the last Republican nominee is now considered a flaming liberal. Some “conservatives” even said they could never vote for Romney but the same was said by Hillary’s supporters about Obama in 2008.

Are we more divided than ever? More vicious? No. Abe Lincoln once insulted a man so cruelly on the floor of the Illinois senate he made him cry. Fistfights among elected officials were not uncommon in those days. Alexander Hamilton fought and was killed in a duel because he’d been…BESMIRCHED! Politics has always been rough but the passion it ignites is nothing compared to that of religion. Sensible people say you should never talk about either in polite company, hence my gutless choice to use the pseudonym Cornholio and not my real name, Bartholomew Cornelius Polkinghauser III.

And what about Devil worship? Aleister Crowley has been called the most evil man who ever lived. I wouldn’t go that far. However, being the father of modern occultism and a specialist in all sorts of perversions and bad habits, he was not exactly well behaved. Crowley was born in England in 1875 to deeply religious parents. They were strict and harsh. His father died when he was 11 and his mother’s religiosity took on a rigid, even bizarre quality. She railed against the evil of the world and cursed mankind daily. Crowley received little better treatment. He had little affection for his family and came to outright despise his mother.

As a teenager, Crowley worshipped Satan. Later, as experiments with séances, sex rituals, and other sorts of silliness progressed, he believed in neither God nor Satan. His religion, sort of a mix of Hedonism, Neitzsche-ism, and spirit worship still influences weirdos to this day.

Crowley was a world-class chess player and renowned mountain climber who set records that lasted for decades. He traveled the world and was a fairly accomplished poet. He was quite literally a genius. Yet, Crowley was also a narcissist who used people like handkerchiefs, stupidly wasted a large inheritance and then mooched the rest of his life, slept with a battalion of women and men, experimented with all manner of drugs, struggled with heroin addiction, left a man to die on a mountain top, abandoned his wife and children, and raised two other children in his care like animals. One day he asked his girlfriend how he could prove his love. She said, “eat my poo”. He did.

An interesting man, very little in Crowley’s life is actually instructive. He was good at spotting hypocrisy, however, and there was a quote in Martin Booth’s excellent biography I found rather remarkable. Crowley stated, “In a way, my mother was insane, in the sense that all people are who have watertight compartments in the brain, and hold with equal passion incompatible ideas, and hold them apart lest their meeting should destroy both.”

Psychologist and Christian James W. Fowler wrote a marginally readable but important book that explained beautifully those watertight compartments in the brain. “The Stages of Faith” is about the way humans see the world. The first two stages are in childhood. Roughly, stage three is when an adult accepts blindly without examination the values he or she was taught. Stage four is when childhood or societally dominant values are indeed challenged and maybe even rejected. Personal responsibility is taken for one’s beliefs. The problem is that contradiction or paradox is simply deflected.  Those watertight compartments still exist. Stage five is when a person becomes less self-absorbed and accepts the fact that truth is often complex and confusing. Paradox can be incorporated without inner turmoil. Not necessarily a postmodern rejection of objective truth, respect for other belief systems develops. Stage six is when one begins to understand that all humans are universally connected in a way. Truth may still exist. Good and evil may still exist but tribalist us vs. them thinking disappears. After deep examination of his thoughts and beliefs, he focuses even less on the self and actually lives the principles of absolute love, justice, and selflessness. He is willing to consistently sacrifice himself for the good of others. Sadly, the research shows these latter two stages are exceedingly rare.

When liberals blindly view the rich as enemies and conservatives as selfish and evil, when conservatives think Obama wants to ruin the economy, or that every liberal is godless, immoral, and hates America, when churchgoers think every nonbeliever is wicked and capricious*, they are holding on to those watertight compartments. Being in the mushy middle is not the answer. I have taken a side and believe it is the right and moral one. But not every fact or event can be Limbaugh-wedged into a neat little package of ideology.

So when I’m confronted with the sharp sword of truth, I hope I recognize it. I pray my mind is not made of iron or water. I pray my mind is made of clay: solid and firm, yet soft and compliant. I hope that sword sticks.

 Phillipians 1: 9, 10.

*Yes, I’m aware of Romans 3:12