White Stains

by Crowley, Aleister

• ISBN13: 9781902588919
• ISBN10: 1902588916
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-06-30
• Publisher: Wet Angel Books

Summary

White Stains remains Aleister Crowley's most infamous work, his attempt at taking the Satanic/erotic decadencee of Baudelaire and ramping it up to new extremes of degradation, sexual depravity and demonic frenzy. Revelling in filth, Crowley includes odes to sodomy, fellatio, cunnilingus, analingus, rape, lesbianism, impotence, venereal disease, bestiality, sado-masochism, coprophilia, necrophila, blasphemy and devil-worship in this staggering, over-the-top compendium of eros and evil.This first US edition of White Stains also includes Crowley's rare later volume, The Nameless Novel (1904), a rampant pornographic novella written to stimulate and amuse his wife.With a new introduction by Crowley scholar D M Mitchell, the book is a classic document of fin-de-siècle erotica, as well as a unique compendium of Crowley's most outrageous and notorious literary output.New edition with new cover. First in a new series, Forbidden Erotic Classics, dedicated to literary works which were censored, suppressed or even prosecuted upon their original publication.

Excerpts

INTRODUCTIONThe paths to God are manifold and the masks of God are often deceptive. We (in the West) have been taught to look for God as something distinct from nature, something separated and outside the manifest universe and despite our self-congratulatory beliefs in our new-found liberation, we must concede that old habits die hard. Millions of people who consider they are not Christians are still in fact not truly free from the grip of the church's old repressions. Simply disbelieving in the power of Christ has not freed them from the flabby clutch of Jesus coiled like a tapeworm around their hearts and instincts, weighed about with the chains of two thousand years of dualistic thinking and sexual guilt-complexes. So how can one find one's way out of the mazes and traps of this thanatoptic culture? There are definitely no easy ways out, no quick fixes, no overnight cures for a sickness cultivated with such distilled self-loathing as Christianity. How often do we feel the disappointment that all the noise we made and fuss we kicked up during our various pet revolutions produced no real lasting results. In effect we expected too much payback for too little effort and too small a sacrifice. Remember the sacrifices made that launched the insanity of Christianity onto the world, the martyrs, the persecutions and the crucifixions!. How can one expect to change all that overnight, like the skinny weakling on the beach sending off for Charles Atlas' miracle bodybuilding course? We want it, but we don't want to pay for it. Can all the sickness be undone without sacrifices? Maybe a different sort of sacrifice is needed; rather than the mortification of the flesh, a giving up of ones' illusory self and false ego for a purpose more integrated with the web of life and our deepest instincts which are both animal and divine. Maybe we should eschew comfort of acceptance and self-esteem, focus not on how we wish to be seen by others but on meshing with our True Will. Such a sacrifice was attempted, if not actually made, by the Great Beast, Frater Perdurabo, mundanely known as Aleister Crowley. Courting ridicule, anathema, public loathing, professing self-deity, experimenting on his body, heart and mind ruthlessly and recording the results diligently, Perdurabo became a one-man campaign for the enlightenment of mankind. The results of his research and work are catalogued in the many volumes of his work. It's all there, if you know how to read it. ....