Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION
Tipping Point for India: Catalyst for Crowley

PART ONE
Crowley in India

ONE Go East, Young Man!
Madame Blavatsky and India
Theosophy in Ceylon
How Indians Became Aryans

TWO Fall-Out and Fall-In
Allan Bennett
Bennett in Ceylon 1900-1901

THREE The Beast in Colombo

FOUR To Kandy
Yoga - The Essentials

FIVE Big Game, Small Games
Dambulla, Sigiraya, and Anurādhapura
Thomas William Rhys Davids

SIX The Aim Is Being: Calcutta
Madura
Edward Thornton

SEVEN Burma--by Train, Boat, and Paddle Steamer
The Irrawaddy Flotilla Company
Akyab

EIGHT Across India Benares

NINE K2

TEN Return to Ceylon, via Boleskine

ELEVEN The Works: 1901-1904
The Argonauts
The Dhammapada
Berashith
Science and Buddhism

TWELVE The Works II: “Ascension Day” and “Pentecost”
Pansil
Pentecost
Done, at Akyab

THIRTEEN 1905: Jñāna Yoga
The Mahatma Guru Yogi Sabhapaty Swami and His Vedantic Raj Yoga Philosophy
Sabhapaty’s System

FOURTEEN Kangchenjunga

FIFTEEN Moharbhanj

SIXTEEN Get Out of Calcutta Quick!

SEVENTEEN Return to Burma

PART TWO
India in Crowley

EIGHTEEN Samādhi
Lola Daydream

NINETEEN I Came from God the World to Save: 1907

TWENTY 777 and Book 4
The Tree of Life
Book 4
Āsana • Prān. āyāma and Its Parallel in Speech, Mantrayoga • Yama and Niyama • Pratyāhāra • Dhāran. ā • Dhyāna • Samādhi Summary

TWENTY-ONE Sit Down, Shut Up, Get Out!
The Guru in Action
Yoga for Yahoos and Yellowbellies
Yoga and the War

TWENTY-TWO The Coiled Splendor
The Secret Typescript
The Latent Light Culture
Independence

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Britain’s leading scholar of Western esotericism, Tobias Churton is a world authority on Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Freemasonry, and Rosicrucianism. Appointed Honorary Fellow of Exeter University in 2005, he holds a master’s degree in theology from Brasenose College, Oxford, and is the author of many books, including Gnostic Philosophy and Aleister Crowley in America. He lives in the heart of England.

Reviews

“Relying to a large degree on unpublished documents, Churton’s narrative account demonstrates the extent of Crowley’s engagement with both the theoretical and practical dimensions of Hindu and Buddhist teachings and their enduring influence on his magical philosophy. Crowley’s efforts in conjoining the spiritual systems of the East and West have important implications for the study of comparative esotericism, and Churton deserves praise for his eloquent treatment of this fascinating subject.”
*Gordan Djurdjevic, Ph.D., author of India and the Occult*

“The devil is in the details when it comes to the study of Aleister Crowley, and in this groundbreaking book Tobias Churton offers a compelling look at this all-too-overlooked period of Crowley’s sojourns in South Asia. Much praise and credit is due to Churton for revealing the many strands of Crowley’s life and relationships during this formative period--from his poetry to his mountaineering and from his interest in the yogi Sri Sabhapati Svami to his humorous and often purposely offensive social commentaries. Scholars of early modern Hinduism, Buddhism, and Western esotericism as well as general Crowley aficionados will all find much of interest here, especially given the wealth of historical context that Churton provides for the colonial-era history of India, for early Theosophy, and of course for Crowley right in the thick of it all with his mystical and magical aspirations.”
*Keith Cantú, Ph.D. candidate in religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbar*

“In this excellent book, Tobias Churton examines Crowley’s critically productive time as a student of yoga and Buddhism under his brilliant mentor Allan Bennett and sheds light on the wider context of the cultural push to bring Eastern mysticism to the West, a movement that has shaped both modern spirituality and world history itself.”
*Jason Louv, author of John Dee and the Empire of Angels*

“Tobias Churton has once again uncovered--and more importantly, interpreted--some critical aspects of Aleister Crowley’s life and legacy. As with Aleister Crowley in America, he has leveraged his unprecedented access to long-hidden archival material by and about the Great Beast; with these records Churton fills in additional pieces of the grand puzzle that is Crowley, so the reader can see a more complete picture of the experiences that shaped the development and interpretation of his mandate to spread Thelema to the world.”
*Toby Chappell, author of Infernal Geometry and the Left-Hand Path*