The Temple of Solomon the King

This is an installment from "The Temple of Solomon the King," a series published in *The Equinox* (the journal of Aleister Crowley's magical order, the A∴A∴), written in the early twentieth century in the tradition of Western ceremonial magic and occult scholarship. The text's central argument is that mystical and ecstatic states of consciousness are real, valuable phenomena that deserve rigorous scientific study rather than dismissal — opening by endorsing William James's critique of "medical materialism," which lazily pathologizes mystics as epileptics or neuropaths without offering any coherent theory for why physiological explanations should discredit religious experience but not ordinary scientific thought. The author contends that Western esoteric and magical traditions have been in disarray for roughly two thousand years — corrupted by Christianity's absorption of pagan elements and by ignorant priestcraft — while Eastern systems have maintained continuous, practical "scientific systems of illuminism." The distinctive claim is that deliberately inducing states of mystical ecstasy at will constitutes "the Great Work" — the central achievement of genuine occult practice — and that this project must be approached the way a physician approaches a patient: through systematic observation, precise record-keeping, and the skeptic's question "Why?" applied to both belief and disbelief. The piece is self-consciously programmatic, acknowledging it cannot yet provide the full "alphabet" of a new systematic language for mystical experience but positioning itself as a first step toward one. Readers interested in early twentieth-century Western esotericism, the intersection of occultism with William James's psychology of religion, or the intellectual foundations of Thelema will find this directly relevant.

The Temple of Solomon the King

Related pages View as graph →