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
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.
“Relying to a large degree on unpublished documents, Churton’s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*
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